Sesame Street Cred / Western Animation

• Many Disney animated shows often bring in celebrity guest stars to voice characters, with some even being those who star in another show on their television asset ABC:
  • Regis Philbin appeared in an episode of Lilo & Stitch: The Series.
  • Smash Mouth appeared as themselves in an episode of Kim Possible. In addition, there have been episodes featuring voice roles by Debbie Reynolds and Anneliese van der Pol.
  • The original run of Muppet Babies ^note  Which is now owned by Disney as of 2021. Back when it aired, Marvel owned the show included guest appearances from Stan Lee and Les Ballets Trockadero De Monte Carlo. In addition, Howie Mandel voiced Baby Animal, Skeeter and Baby Bunsen during the show's first two seasons.
    • The 2018 reboot made by Disney themselves features Jenny Slate as Nanny and guests like Rachel Bloom.
  • Phineas and Ferb has brought in several guest stars as themselves, including Clay Aiken, Chaka Khan, Slash (who actually plays The Movie's feature song with the crew), Peter Noone, Davy Jones (both of which sung the song "Meatloaf" as the members of Tiny Cowboy in "Meatloaf Surprise"), Kelly Clarkson (who didn't get to sing), Vicki Lawrence and Bowling for Soup, who also perform the show's theme song. Also of note is when they brought in Luc Robitaille to serve as a celebrity referee in an exhibition hockey match that turned into Hockey-Z9.
  • Dave the Barbarian featured a guest spot from James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich.
  • Tangled: The Series features such celebrities as Sean Hayes, Jeffery Ross, Richard Kind and Carol Kane in regular roles.
  • Sofia the First featured guest spots by Cary Elwes, Viola Davis, and Tracey Ullman, among others. It also features Ariel Winter as the titular character and Tim Gunn as Baileywick.
  • Gravity Falls often featured celebrity guest voice actors. Some of these have included Larry King, T.J. Miller, Neil Degrasse Tyson, John Stewart, Weird Al Yankovic, Patton Oswalt and John Oliver.
  • The Legend of Tarzan featured the voices of Diahann Carroll, Craig Ferguson and Jason Alexander.
  • The titular character of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is voiced by Patrick Warburton.
  • Recess featured guest spots from Tim Curry and Buzz Aldrin.
  • Handy Manny had Mrs. Portillo, voiced by Shelley Morrison from General Hospital.
  • The Proud Family had episodes where celebrities such as Ashanti, Steve Harvey, Smokey Robinson, Tim Conway, Mo'Nique, Kobe Bryant, Chick Hearn, Samuel L. Jackson and Shia LeBouf did guest voices.
  • Ed Begley Jr., Josh Duhamel, Gilbert Gottfried, Tim Gunn, and Carson Palmer played themselves in episodes of The Replacements.
  • Higglytown Heroes had guest spots from Betty White, Tim Curry, Kathie Lee Gifford, Cyndi Lauper, Ed McMahon, Phil LaMar, Cicely Tyson, Wayne Brady, Sharon Stone and Raven Symone.
  • The Osbourne family—Kelly, Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne—appeared in The 7D in guest roles.
• An episode of Dennis the Menace (UK) featured the then-presenters of Blue Peter.
• Arthur has always had an interesting variety of guest stars, including cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Matt Damon^note of "You tell Arthur Read that he'll never eat lunch in this town again!" fame, Idina Menzel, Philip Seymour Hoffman, 3 then-current Boston Red Sox baseball players, blues singer Koko Taylor, Art Garfunkel, Tom & Ray Magliozzi, Joshua Redman (as Francine's "uncle"), Michelle Kwan, Alex Trebek, Neil Gaiman, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, Lance Armstrong^note this was well before the doping scandal got both of his episodes banned, and (weirdly) architect Frank Gehry. Not to mention the time the characters did an interview with a live-action Larry King.
  • To say nothing of the special "Arthur, It's Only Rock 'n Roll", in which Muffy's obsession with the Backstreet Boys (who are mistakenly referred to as a rock band) prompts Francine to create a band of her own as part of a bet against her.
• Dave Mustaine and Brian Wilson appeared in different episodes of Duck Dodgers. The regular theme tune was performed by the Flaming Lips, with Tom Jones(!) on vocals.
• SpongeBob SquarePants has featured music by Pantera and Ween, and guest spots from David Bowie, The Cramps, The Dwarves, and Johnny Depp.
  • "Who're you?" "I'm David Hasselhoff."
    • Also, among the bands who contributed to the movie's soundtrack are The Flaming Lips, Wilco, The Shins, and Motörhead.
  • The Violent Femmes covered the show's theme song for a 2001 promo.
  • Will Ferrell, Craig Ferguson, Tina Fey, Rosario Dawson, LeBron James, P!nk, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and Robin Williams appeared in the 10th anniversary special. Ricky Gervais was the narrator.
  • Another notable one was Jon Hamm in the 200th episode, "Goodbye, Krabby Patty", where his character acted a lot like his role in Mad Men. Most viewers claimed that this was the best part of the episode, if not one of the best SpongeBob guest stars of all time.
  • Andy Samberg played Colonel Carper in "Hello, Bikini Bottom!".
  • A lot of famous musicians wrote songs for the Broadway musical, including the Flaming Lips, T.I. and Sara Bareilles.
  • Charles Nelson Reilly from Match Game played the Dirty Bubble (Tom Kenny took over the role after his first appearance however).
  • The third movie, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, will feature two As Himself cameos from Keanu Reeves and Snoop Dogg, as well as a spot from Monsta X.
  • Sometimes, the celebrities given creds on SpongeBob are recurring characters:
    • Tom Kenny himself is this, having been a comedian before he took on voice acting.
    • The Flying Dutchman is voiced by Brian Doyle Murray, the brother of Bill Murray.
    • Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy were played by Tim Conway and Ernest Borgnine.
• Thomas & Friends has had many celebrity narrators, among them, Ringo Starr (the original narrator), George Carlin, Alec Baldwin, and Pierce Brosnan.
  • Didi Conn of Grease played Stacey Jones in the show that brought Thomas over to the United States, Shining Time Station. Starr and then Carlin appeared as Mr. Conductor (a magical train conductor the size of an action figure) who would narrate the Thomas segments. (Baldwin then took the role for the infamous Thomas And The Magic Railraod theatrical film, narrating episodes released afterward until 2005; by this point, the show was now airing by itself in the US.)
• VeggieTales had quite a bit of crossover with the Christian Rock scene, most likely due to the show's significant teenage Periphery Demographic.
  • In "Larry-Boy and the Rumor Weed", a ska-swing cover of "The Rumor Weed Song" by The W's plays over the end credits.
  • In Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, the song "Second Chances" is performed by Anointed. In addition, an original song by the Newsboys, "In the Belly of a Whale", plays over the end credits.
  • Relient K did a split EP, with RK covering Larry the Cucumber's "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything," and Larry covering RK's "Breakdown".
  • They released an entire album of Christian rock artists such as Skillet covering VeggieTales songs, entitled Veggie Rocks.
  • A lot of the videos made in The New '10s prior to VeggieTales in the House used guest voice actors. For instance, Amy Grant guest starred in Saint Nicholas: A Story Of Joyful Giving and Kellie Pickler played Mirabelle in Beauty and the Beet.
• Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child and Adventures from the Book of Virtues, two shows that retold classic stories, used celebrity voice actors for most of the characters in their stories, such as the voices of Malcolm McDowell, Ed Begley, Jr., Tim Curry, Shelley Duvall, Elijah Wood and Mark Hamill. Unfortunately, the celebrity roles in the latter were removed in later releases because of the series being redubbed.
• The Alvin and the Chipmunks episode "Urban Chipmunk" had Dolly Parton.
• Simple Plan appeared as themselves in the What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode "Simple Plan and the Invisible Mad Man". They also performed the show's opening theme.
• Milli Vanilli appeared in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3. Ironically, two weeks before they were exposed for lip synching, which utterly trashed their cred.
  • Before that, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! featured various guest stars, including Nicole Eggert, Sgt. Slaughter, Pam Matteson (once as herself and once as Cher), Harry Blackstone Jr., Magic Johnson, Brian Bonsall, Jim Lange, Vanna White, Roddy Piper, Cyndi Lauper, Ernie Hudson, Moon Zappa, Elvira, and Captain Lou Albano, who gets bonus points for playing the main character but still appearing as himself in one episode.
• Speaking of Slaughter, he made occasional appearances in G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero as himself. As expected, he rarely uses guns.
• Garfield and Friends had several celebrity guest stars like Imogene Coca, James Earl Jones, and Don Knotts. Some of these celebrity guest stars were recurring characters on the show, like Victoria Jackson as Garfield's love interest, Penelope, and Kevin Meaney as Aloysius Pig, Orson's bossy cousin who worked for (DA-DUM!) The Network. Kevin's role became so popular that he pursued a career in voice acting as a result. And like SpongeBob above, at least two of the celebrity roles were tied to the main cast, with Lorenzo Music playing Garfield and Howard Morris voicing Wade Duck, with the latter also voicing several incidental characters.
  • The Garfield Specials provided Lou Rawls as Garfield's singing voice and Pat Carroll as Grandma.
  • The Garfield Show had Rose Marie, Chuck McCann and Stan Freberg as celebrity guest stars.
• As with The 7D example above, Ozzy Osbourne has also voiced characters in a number of children's shows, one of them being the Nick Jr. series Bubble Guppies.
• KISS appear as themselves in the "Wishology" trilogy of The Fairly Oddparents, though only Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley provided voices.
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic series has had several guest actors appear on the show, from John de Lancie to "Weird Al" Yankovic, and even William Shatner. JdL's appearance as Discord proved so popular, he was brought back as a recurring character.
  • When the movie came out, it featured a cast that included Zoe Saldaña, Kristin Chenoweth, Sia (who voiced Songbird Serenade), Michael Peña, and Emily Blunt.
• Weird Al has appeared As Himself in several iterations of Scooby-Doo. He's also made guest appearances in other shows including The Simpsons and The Aquabats! Super Show!, had recurring roles in several shows (The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Transformers: Animated), and the lead in the Disney animated series Milo Murphy's Law.
• Hip-Hop artists Childish Gambino and notoriously foul-mouthed Tyler, the Creator provided rapping for one-off characters in the rap battle-themed Regular Show episode "Rap it Up."
• Flamboyant figure skater/reality TV star/commentator Johnny Weir appeared in a special promo that aired during the Dora the Explorer special "Dora's Ice Skating Spectacular!" to teach her how to do a figure skating jump and to mention the importance of sparkles. Hilary Duff also voiced the villainous ice witch Jessica in the same episode.
  • Shakira appeared in the Dora's Explorer Girls special As Herself and was a major plot point, since the special involved the girls trying to retrieve lost tickets for her concert.
  • Mel Brooks starred in the special "Dora In Wonderland".
• Barbara Eden of I Dream of Jeannie fame got her cred when she appeared on Shimmer and Shine.
• Dale Crover and King Buzzo of the Melvins voiced themselves in an episode of Uncle Grandpa.
• This Old House master carpenter Norm Abram helped a couple of the contestants build their lemonade stand in one episode of WGBH stablemate FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman.
  • Penn & Teller appear in "You Can't Teach An Orange Dog New Tricks".
• Norm Abram appears as himself in an episode of Freakazoid!, blackmailed by the Lobe to build a giant wooden horn.
  • There was also Jack Valenti (and his cheeks), the real-life head of the Motion Picture Association of America, who served as the Interactive Narrator for "The Chip", taking time out to explain the MPAA's movie ratings system. (He explained at the end of the episode that he was there because producer Steven Spielberg was a good friend of his.) Not to mention Ricardo Montalbán, in full-on Khan mode, as Armando Guiterrez, and a then-unknown Craig Ferguson as Roddy MacStew (both would appear in later episodes). Ed Asner had a regular role as Sgt. Cosgrove.
• Before They Might Be Giants even started making children's records, two songs from their third album Flood ("Particle Man" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)") appeared in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures. Plucky and Hamton are even dressed like John Linnell and John Flansburgh respectively during a part of the Istanbul segment.
  • Even earlier than that, the band hosted an episode of Nick Rocks to promote the song "(She Was A) Hotel Detective", the lead single from their debut album.
• While most celebrity appearances in Teen Titans Go! fall under So My Kids Can Watch, three of them do not:
  • In the first season episode "The Date", Ricky Jay played the voice in Robin's head, making this instance an example of Early-Installment Weirdness.
  • Bob Uecker (best known for the 1980s sitcom Mr. Belvedere and his long-time gig as the radio voice of Milwaukee Brewers baseball), whose children and grandkids are out of the target demographic for Teen Titans Go!, appeared in season five's "BBRBDay!", in the era when most guest voices did it for their kids. ^note There's actually an explanation for this: Bob had been on the back of the creator's minds ever since the show began, but didn't fit quite well into the episode they were going to use him for, so they waited for a perfect plot idea to use him.
  • Rap group De La Soul, who guest starred in the episode "Don't Press Play", is this trope as none of the members of the group have children of their own.
• Schoolhouse Rock!: While many songs are sung in-house, usually by the songwriters, The Tokens were brought in to sing about gravity.
• We Bare Bears:
  • T-Pain stars As Himself in the episode "The Limo".
  • Monsta X guest-starred in the episode "Panda's Birthday".
• BRIAN BLESSED voices Grandpy Rabbit in Peppa Pig.
• Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? is an entire series that pairs the Mystery Gang wound up with a different guest each episode. Several of those guests fall into this territory, including Wanda Sykes, Sia, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Morgan Freeman, and more. For what it's worth, Steve Urkel's (reprised by Jaleel White, no less) episode falls into this, as Family Matters had ended its run some 20 years before Guess Who premiered.
  • Its spiritual predecessor was The New Scooby-Doo Movies which did more or less the same thing, pairing the gang wound up with guests as varied as Sonny and Cher, Dick Van Dyke and Tim Conway.
• The 2019 Where's Waldo? cartoon contains many celebrity guest stars like Weird Al, Retta and Oscar Nunez.
• Steve-O appeared in the The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants episode "Captain Underpants and the Bombastic Blathering of the Brainy Blabulous".
• Cher had a guest spot in an episode of Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh.
• Summer Camp Island casts Whoopi Goldberg, Alia Shawkat, Elijah Wood, Mike Birbiglia and Cedric the Entertainer in minor roles.
• Mel Brooks voiced one of the sheep in Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks.
• Judy Greer plays the titular character of Let's Go Luna!.
• Rocket Power features guests like Brian Doyle Murray, Robert Pine, Steve Guttenberg, and, fittingly for the series' theme, Tony Hawk.
• Kristin Davis of Sex and the City fame voices the titular character of Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends.
• Lily Tomlin voices Miss Frizzle in the 1994 TV adaptation of The Magic School Bus.
  • NFL player Dan Marino and Dolly Parton also guest starred in the first series.
• Blue's Clues occasionally had celebrity guests appear on the show or provide voices, including Gloria Estefan, Rosie O'Donnell, Wynnona Judd, Casey Kasem and Kevin Clash.
• Rugrats had several celebrities voice characters, including Ron Liebman, Mo'Nique, Pamela Adlon, Jon Farveau, Lou Rawls, Dan Castanella and Alex Trebek.
• The Peep and the Big Wide World episode "One Duck Too Many" features Megan Mullally as a female duck who claims her name is Quack.
• Pete the Cat featured guest spots from Elvis Costello, Jim Parsons, Jason Mraz and KT Turnstall.
• Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! had Beyoncé guest star as the leader of the Wubb Girlz in the special "Wubb Idol".
• Martin Short takes the epynomous role in The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!.
• David Steele guest-starred as a macaw musician in Littlest Pet Shop.
  • Heidi Klum and Casey Wilson also guest star as a singing beagle and a famous cat respectively.
• Warren Buffet and Jay-Z starred as themselves in Secret Millionaires Club, though Buffett didn't voice himself.
• One of the earliest examples of this trope, happening the same year Sesame Street premiered, was radio host Casey Kasem playing Shaggy in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.
• Tanya Roberts of That '70s Show fame guest starred in the children's shows The Angry Beavers and Fillmore!.
• Christopher Plummer narrates Madeline.
• Amvest Video, a public domain distributor, had a tape of cartoons hosted by Al Lewis as his Grandpa character (renamed Grampa for legal reasons) from The Munsters.
• Several celebrity guests have appeared on Bluey, including Robert Irwin, Layne Beachly, Anthony Field and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
• In Cyberchase, Christopher Lloyd and Gilbert Gottfried play The Hacker and Digit, respectively.
• Felipe Esparza guest-starred on an episode of Victor and Valentino.
• City Island (2022) has guest stars such as Amy Schumer, who voices Terra.
• The Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation F.O.O.D.F.I.T.E" had songs written by, of all people, GWAR. Yes, the same band that sprays gallons of fake blood while dressed as grotesque Super Sentai villains.

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