Times where someone insists "The Show Must Go On!" regardless of setbacks in Literature.
- Beautiful Music for Ugly Children: John, a DJ, tells Gabe his favorite no-dead-air story. He stepped out onto the balcony to watch a Halloween party and locked himself out with only a minute left of the song. John leaped off the balcony, scraping his hands, twisting his ankle, and losing all the candy in his pockets. Then he tore open a window with his bare hands, climbed into the building, and ripped two doors off their hinges to get into the studio. He made it just in time.
- The name of a chapter in a The Berenstain Bears book in which Brother and Sister bear attempt to help a horseback riding teacher save her building by means of a fundraiser to pay the mortgage. In the chapter, the villains have been defeated and prevented from sabotaging the fundraiser in their bid to gain control of the building, but despite the problems they have, they still have to hold the event to get the necessary money.
- Double Star: Actor Lorenzo Smythe's only real principle is this trope. As the plot thickens he sits down and thinks about why the show must go on ('because some shows are pretty awful') and realizes the basic principle is applicable to more than acting.
- In The Emperor's New Clothes, the Emperor decides that the parade in his "new clothes" must go on after a young boy has shouted out the truth.
- In Gracefully Grayson, trans girl Grayson's wrist is fractured in a Homophobic Hate Crime the day of the school play, in which she stars as Persephone. After she gets out of the ER, she appears on stage wearing a pink cast along with her gown.
- In Maskerade, this is the philosophy of the Ankh-Morpork Opera House, where a show cannot stop even if the lead singer is dead (they recruit another from the audience, or work the corpse via ventriloquism). When someone actually does stop a show (as it's Discworld) the resulting entropic shockwave physically flings Walter Plinge, a man truly in tune with opera, from his seated position.
- Murder Wears a Mummer's Mask: Stage actress Nora Carson is staring down at the smashed face of her father, freshly murdered. Her husband Frank reminds her that the play is about to start, and Nora says "I suppose I'll have to go on." Subverted in that Nora is soon after lured out of her dressing room and herself murdered.
- This is Rachel's motto in No More Dead Dogs, even as early back as kindergarten. At the end of the book she convinces everyone to remain performing the play with these words after the Old Shep dog is blown up with a cherry bomb.
- In the Rainbow Magic series, this happens in Paige the Christmas Play Fairy's book. Jack Frost interfering with a performance of Cinderella forces the girls to improvise.
