Whole Plot Reference / Western Animation

• The Simpsons has done a few episodes like this. The Jazz Singer, 101 Dalmatians, Mary Poppins, Lord of the Flies...
  • "Treehouse of Horror" featured a sequence based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", with Homer as the narrator and Bart as the titular bird. This was later done in "Simpsons Bible Stories", "Simpsons Tall Tales", "Tales from the Public Domain", and "Simpsons Christmas Stories".
  • The episode "Cape Feare" deserves special mention for its loving homage to... uh, Cape Fear — both the original and the remake. This episode established the film's main theme as Sideshow Bob's leitmotif.
  • In the show's early seasons, any plot that focused on Mr. Burns is likely to be a whole plot reference to Citizen Kane. It's so prevalent, the writing staff have speculated that it's probably possible to reconstruct the entire movie scene-for-scene with clips from the show. The episodes "Rosebud," and "Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish" are of special note.
  • "HOMR" is a Flowers for Algernon-esque episode where it's revealed that the reason for Homer's stupidity is because he stuck a crayon up his nose as a kid and it got lodged in his brain. Removing it turns him into a genius, but he eventually finds that he's unhappy being a genius and gets another crayon jammed up his nose to reverse it.
  • The episode "Marge on the Lam" is essentially Thelma & Louise with a reduction in violence (car theft vs. murder), and an increase in satire (a sub-plot with the kids staying at home looked over by Lionel Hutz, the iconic final scene from the film is not done by Marge and her friend, but by Wiggum and Homer (unwillingly), and they are saved by a gigantic landfill on the bottom of the canyon).
  • "Barthood" is a Bart Simpson take on Boyhood. Lampshaded at the end where Bart asks Homer if he liked that movie and Homer says, "Oh, is that what this was?"
• Futurama:
  • The pilot episode is a goofy version of the already satirical novel Immortality, Inc.. Funnily enough, Bender would later become more like the corresponding character from the book — the scene where Bender and Fry go to a bar ends with them becoming fast friends, while in the book the Bender-analogue takes the opportunity to drug him and sell his organs.
  • The episode "Parasites Lost" is a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot, but more specifically it's an homage to the Doctor Who serial "The Invisible Enemy", such as using the conceit of having shrunken duplicates that allow Fry to explore his own body — specifically his own brain — along with a character named Leela.
  • "T: The Terrestrial" is obviously just ET The Extraterrestrial except the alien and human role are switched around.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show had an episode called "A Yard Too Far" that was basically the same plot as Yogi Bear's "Pie Pirates" episode except that the dog is replaced with a baboon and pies are replaced with hog jowls.
• Garfield and Friends was very fond of these, especially in its US Acres sequences.
• This was the whole point of Alf Tales, a Spin-Off of the Animated Adaptation of ALF.
• Rugrats
  • An episode where Tommy's maternal grandfather tells them the story of Passover, which the babies imagine themselves in, while a later episode did the same with the story of Hanukkah.
  • Another episode involves Suzie dreaming she is Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.
  • An episode based on Flowers for Algernon, replacing Charly's temporarily heightened intelligence with Chuckie's temporarily heightened sense of smell.
  • An It's a Wonderful Plot episode.
  • There's also one where Angelica and Susie remade Thelma & Louise.
  • "Fugitive Tommy," is an obvious take on The Fugitive.
  • "Wash/Dry Story" is West Side Story set in a laundromat, with the regulars and the McNulty kids as the rival gangs, and Cynthia as Maria.
  • The Season 3 episode "Gold Rush" is a spoof of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with pennies in a sandbox substituted for gold in the American southwest.
• Strawberry Shortcake:
  • The 2003 version has retold "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty" and "Rapunzel". The retelling of Rapunzel is basically In Name Only, as the title character is already a princess, but so wild and free-spirited that her tutor places her in a tower to keep her from being distracted from her lessons in being proper royalty (super-long hair is apparently very regal).
  • Another episode is "inspired" by Around the World in 80 Days. The Peculiar Purple Pieman challenges Strawberrry to travel around the world in 80 days. She makes it by exploiting the same loophole as in the book, which she even points out.
• The Batman episode "Strange Minds" is based on The Cell, of all films. Batman uses a revolutionary device pioneered by Professor Hugo Strange to enter the Joker's mind in order to discover the whereabouts of Detective Yin, whom Joker has kidnapped and hidden somewhere in a giant Jack-in-the-Box rigged with a bomb.
• The Batman Beyond episode "Eyewitness" is one for the previous series' episode "Over the Edge." In an ironic twist, Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl, whose greatest fear in the previous episode was that her death would cause her father to launch a personal vendetta against Batman, ends up doing exactly what she feared her father doing when she's tricked into believing that the new Batman has brutally murdered a criminal.
• Jim Henson's Muppet Babies often has the kids imagining themselves as the characters in various well-known stories.
• Done in the Adventures from the Book of Virtues episode "Courage" (1998), when Aristotle the prairie dog tells Zach the story of "Zach and the Beanstalk", in which Zach plays the character of Jack.
• Family Guy did Poltergeist, Back to the Future and Rocky III, as well as Family Guy Presents: Laugh It Up, Fuzzball for Star Wars. Completely averted with "Peter Griffin Presents The King and I".
• American Dad!:
  • A whole episode is based on The Da Vinci Code.
  • And one for James Bond (or perhaps that style of spy fiction in general, it's hard to tell).
  • They also once did What's Eating Gilbert Grape, with squirrels.
  • Lampshaded in "Return of the Bling," which is (as the name suggests) a The Lord of the Rings parody. At the very end, Roger bites one of Stan's fingers off for no apparent reason. When Steve demands to know why Roger just shrugs and says "They did it in the movie."
  • Steve's plot from "Far-Break Hotel" is a reference to Somewhere in Time.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes had "I Am Jimmy", the first half of which was parallel to I Am Legend, with Jimmy and Cerbee being the last man and dog-monster in Miseryville.
• Sealab 2021 played this trope straight... on itself. The show is a comedy "sequel" to Sealab 2020, starting out simply with footage from the latter show being Gag Dubbed to episodes with increasing original animation. However, one episode, "7211" had the new voice actors re-dubbing a Sealab 2020 episode verbatim, letting the original's boring plot and surrealism of the situation play out for laughs. Sealab still explodes at the end, of course.
• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law does the same thing in "Turner Classic Birdman" — introduced by Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osbourne as if it were an old movie on TCM.
• Animaniacs is made out of this, doing cartoons inspired by sources such as Apocalypse Now ("Hearts of Twilight") and Duck Soup ("King Yakko").
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • An impressive rendition of Sunset Boulevard featuring Elmyra as Norma, Montana Max as Joe, and Hamton as Max.
  • Another episode was a parody of Voyage of the Kon-Tiki, of all things, with Plucky as Thor Heyerdahl ("Ahh, mango juice").
  • They also have an episode that's a recreation of Citizen Kane, with Montana Max as Charles Foster Kane (saying "ACME!" instead of "Rosebud", although it turned out he was actually yelling "ACNE!").
  • Star Trek starring Furball, Plucky and Hampton.
  • Indiana Jones with Buster.
  • And Superman with Babs.
• Arthur:
  • The episode "D.W. Tale Spins" was a Whole Plot Reference to The Odyssey, of all things. The various characters from the show stood in as the figures from the story.
  • "Around the World in 11 Minutes" is based on Around the World in Eighty Days, portraying a few of the babies and pets taking a trip around the backyard as a worldwide sightseeing tour.
  • "Fountain Abbey" has flashbacks that cast the characters in a British historical drama, similar to Downton Abbey, complete with some of them having similar names and personalities.
• Pinky and the Brain
  • A parody of The Third Man titled "The Third Mouse". This is just one of many Orson Welles in-jokes added into the show due to the Brain having a vocal similarity to the actor. An even more subtle one is "Yes, Always", an homage to an infamous clip of Welles going ballistic while doing commercial voiceovers. The story goes that Maurice LaMarche (Brain's voice actor) used the "Yes, Always" clip as a warm-up, so they wrote an episode spoofing it.
  • Mouse of La Mancha was a parody of Man of La Mancha, complete with Framing Story, as the Brain told the other lab mice the story of "Don Cerebra".
  • One short has Brain and Pinky trying to infiltrate a world leader summit in order to brainwash the leaders. Typical of Brain, of course. But the problem is that the summit is taking place in a chateau on top of an insurmountable mountain with the only means of getting there safely (or at least in time) being to sneak in a cable car... ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Where Rodents Dare".
• The Animated Adaptation of Spaceballs consists mainly of these.
• The Chipmunks Go to the Movies, the last season of Alvin and the Chipmunks, consisted only of these, the targets being relatively recent movies such as Batman (1989), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Back to the Future, and whatnot.
• Adventures of the Gummi Bears (of all shows) has a whole episode based around The Bridge on the River Kwai (of all films), in which Gruffi Bear decides to build a bridge that will last forever but realizes he has to destroy it when Duke Igthorn uses it to mobilize his army.
• South Park:
  • The Wizard of Oz and Die Hard episodes, and a parody of Great Expectations, appropriately starring Pip as... Pip. Except for Estella's out-of-period insults such as "butt pirate", this version is more faithful to the book than a lot of serious adaptations. At least, until the end of the second act when it goes completely off the rails and becomes an action movie parody. (Estella doesn't kill a giant pile of bunnies in the novel? Next thing you know, we'll claim the robot monkeys don't appear in Dickens.)
  • There were also episodes based on the Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Lord of the Rings ("The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers"), King Kong, 300, The Da Vinci Code, The Lottery, The Grapes of Wrath, TRON, The Day After Tomorrow, High School Musical, The Human Centipede, Hannibal Lecter's scenes in The Silence of the Lambs and You Got Served.
  • There are dozens of minor references to Star Trek, and at least three whole plot references: "Dagger of the Mind/Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods", "The Galileo Seven/City on the Edge of Forever (Flashbacks)", and "Miri/The Wacky Molestation Adventure", although the latter is also a whole plot reference to Children of the Corn.
  • Invoked in the Game of Thrones parody: Cartman sends Butters to visit George R.R. Martin to find out how A Song of Ice and Fire ends because he doesn't know what to do.
  • And in a situation that drove Butters/Professor Chaos to hallucination was "Simpsons Did It!", where all of his nefarious plots were things that "The Simpsons" had done already. Chef lampshades this trope, along with pointing out some incidents of it that "The Simpsons" had engaged in before.
• The World's Greatest Super Friends consisted entirely of Whole Plot References to classic tales like The Wizard of Oz.
• The Fillmore! episodes "A Cold Day at X", "Two Wheels, Full Throttle, No Brakes" and "Immune to All But Justice" were essentially kid-friendly versions of Assault on Precinct 13, Gone in Sixty Seconds and Lethal Weapon 2 respectively. Of course Fillmore as a whole is referencing every late 60's/early 70's Quinn Martin detective show.
• Codename: Kids Next Door has done this many times, usually, the genre of film can be discovered by the character in the lead role. Numbuh Five is whenever it's a straight adventure film (Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean). Numbuh Two has become the star of various horror flick parodies and a few Film Noirs. Anything in a genre that borrows from James Bond goes to Numbuh One.
• The entire second season of Freakazoid! is composed of whole-episode parodies, from The Godfather to The Island of Doctor Moreau to Mission: Impossible to Hello, Dolly! to flippin' Amadeus. It seems that every single episode is one of these. Additionally, the first season had a parody of, of all things, The Crawling Eye (in "The Cloud").
• Transformers: Animated:
  • The "Decepticon Air" episode is basically one large send up to Die Hard, with a touch of Con Air, obviously.
  • The "A Bridge Too Close" two-parter takes some inspiration from The Bridge on the River Kwai.
  • And of course, "Sari, No One's Home" was a homage to Home Alone.
• Hey Arnold! loved to do this a lot with a lot of semi-obscure movies/radio shows/etc like Marty, Birdman of Alcatraz, The War of the Worlds, 12 Angry Men, Carmen, and even The Longest Day.
• The Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode "Senate Spy" shamelessly rips off Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, swapping CGI Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala for Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. But that's not all! We get one of Gunga Din with Jar Jar standing in for the bhisti, one of Seven Samurai, and one of Godzilla.
• Dexter's Laboratory
  • The "Dial M For Monkey" short "Wrasslor" is based on a story from Marvel Two-In-One Annual #7, with Wrasslor taking the role of The Champion and Monkey taking the role of The Thing.
  • "A Silent Cartoon" is an homage to the very first Pink Panther cartoon, The Pink Phink, with Dexter in the role of Big Nose/The Little Man, trying to decorate his lab in blue, and Dee Dee in the role of the Pink Panther, turning everything pink.
  • The episode "Monstrosi-Dee-Dee", where Dee Dee repeatedly turns into a monster and back with Dexter none the wiser, is based on the Bugs Bunny short Hyde and Hare.
  • "Mock 5" was one to Speed Racer.
• Bob's Burgers:
  • "The Belchies" to The Goonies, telling how the Belcher kids, Jimmy Jr, Zeke and the Pesto Twins go into an abandoned taffy factory after an old story of Ted leads them to believe there's a treasure hidden there. Louise even befriends a strange creature in the sewers (a taffy statue).
  • "The Deepening" to Jaws, where Mr. Fischoeder buys a large mechanical shark to the amusement park. The shark ends up getting loose and destroying the town. The final scene on the restaurant has Bob and Teddy facing the shark in a similar manner that the boat scene plays out in the movie.
  • "O.T. The Outside Toilet" to ET The Extraterrestrial, in which Gene befriends a super technological toilet left in the woods. With the kid's help, he tries to save it from a man trying to take it away.
  • "The Frond Files", Louise's story is one to The Terminator, in which Frond sends a robotic version of himself from the future to try to kill her, for humiliating him during a ceremony.
  • "Bob and Deliver" to Dead Poets Society, right down to the kids standing on their desks in support of their teacher. The title is also derived from Stand and Deliver.
  • "The Runway Club" is one to The Breakfast Club, telling the story about the Belcher Kids, Tammy, Jocelyn, Zeke and Jimmy Jr. stuck on detention on a Saturday with the pesky Mr. Frond watching over, down to even using a parody song of "Don't You (Forget About Me)".
  • "Midday Run" is one to the 1993 movie The Fugitive. Tina plays a hall monitor chasing after Zeke, who claims to have had a good reason to commit a crime (steal a costume)
  • "The Quirkducers" to The Producers. Louise and Gene try to turn one of Tina's erotic friend fiction into a Thanksgiving play that will be so offensive, it'll force Mr. Frond to give everyone a half day.
  • "Bob Actually" to Love Actually. The format is followed in that, during Valentine's Day, all members of the family live out a love story (Louise tries to protect Rudy from getting his heart broken, Bob prepares a surprise for Linda, Tina, who has diarrhea, tries to find a way to kiss Jimmy Jr. in a trampoline while Gene learns to like bitter chocolate by falling for the new kitchen lady).
  • "Flu-Ouise"'s main plot follows Louise having a fever dream where she walks through a strange land meeting her toys. The structure and ambience of the story make one for The Wizard of Oz
• The plot of the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Squeaky Boots" is one long shout-out to Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. Likewise, the episode "Club SpongeBob" is this to Lord of the Flies.
  • "A Pal For Gary" is this to Gremlins.
• The Beetlejuice cartoon has a few of these, including homages to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
• Martin Mystery has done this at least twice, with The Thing (1982) and Evil Dead.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog did its own rendition of The Nutcracker...taking place in a dump.
• Minoriteam had "Evilfellas", a brilliant episode-long take on Goodfellas and Casino. The action is moved to a circus world, with a Monster Clown filling Joe Pesci's roles. "Funny, how?"
• The plot of the Thomas & Friends episode "Edward and Spencer" is reminiscent of The Tortoise and the Hare.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • "Swarm of the Century" is essentially "The Trouble with Tribbles" with less Klingons.
  • In "Read it and Weep" most of the episode is spent recounting a book that Rainbow Dash is reading. The book is essentially Raiders of the Lost Ark, with ponies.
  • "Dragonshy" is basically The Hobbit with Fluttershy as Bilbo and Twilight as Gandalf. The first sign of the red dragon? Smog.
  • "Wonderbolts Academy" is Top Gun with an interesting twist: Rainbow Dash isn't being Maverick, she is Ice Man, with a new Always Someone Better pony taking the Maverick role; the lesson being that over-confidence and disregard of rules and team-work is a terrible and dangerous thing. Also, there isn't a game of homoerotic beach volleyball.
  • "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" includes shared dreams, plenty of reality-warping (beyond Pinkie Pie), and a guilt-powered antagonist that's been dogging the protagonist in a dream after dream until (s)he finally lets go of what's been eating away at the protagonist's psyche. Like Inception.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Book 3-Chapter 2 episode "The Headband" is a WPR towards Footloose of all things.
  • The final two episodes of Season 2 are a WPR to The Empire Strikes Back.
  • The season two episode "Zuko Alone" is basically Shane in the style of a Jidi Geki film, with Zuko in the titular role of Shane. Notably, it inverts the ending, with the admiring kid coming to despise Zuko and wanting him to leave and never come back.
• Regular Show:
  • The episode "High Score" is a WPR towards the documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, with GBF being an Expy of real-life video game champion Billy Mitchell.
  • The episode "Video Game Wizards" is another towards The Wizard. They even have a Power Glove-like device that turns out to be a dud.
  • And then there's the episode "Weekend At Benson's". Three guesses what that one is about...
  • The Goonies is parodied in the episode "Gamers Never Say Die" which is, of course, a reference to the original gang's catchphrase.
• The Canadian animated show Olliver's Adventures had one episode that was basically a kid-friendly version of Fight Club.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius episode "Monster Hunt" is a retelling of Jaws, with Jimmy as Hooper, Carl as Brody, Sheen as Drunk!Hooper and Recurring Extra Captain Betty as Quint.
• The King of the Hill episode "A Firefighting We Will Go" references Rashomon with Hank, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer as volunteer firemen telling their stories to the fire chief about what caused the firehouse to burn down.
• Done frequently on Duck Dodgers, usually with a Planet of Hats as a justification for putting Dodgers in a completely different genre. (Planet of The '70s in "Diamond Boogie", Planet of Japanese Media Tropes in "The Menace of Maninsuit", etc.)
  • There were two shorts giving A Day in the Limelight for Villain Protagonist Marvin the Martian. Both have Marvin under attack and rescued by Commander K9. However, Marvin is oblivious to the attack and thinks it's K9 who's assaulting him, just like Porky and Sylvester in several classic Looney Tunes shorts. The second one also riffed on Classic Disney Shorts, playing up K9's resemblance to Pluto by making the enemies the Goofy Gophers, Warner's answer to Chip 'n Dale.
• Ned's Newt: The episode "Citizen Ned".
• Punky Brewster: The animated episode "Punky's Millions" is basically Brewster's Millions (1985) with the millions being a game show prize instead of an Unexpected Inheritance.
• The Looney Tunes Show finale "SuperRabbit" is a whole plot reference to Superman II, with the Looney Tunes cast filling for most of the characters.
• The second half of the second season of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes infamously began to aim for a feel more reminiscent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, under Jeph Loeb 's leadership and the massive success of the 2012 Avengers film. Among these new touches were the episode "Powerless" coming pretty darn close to being an animated version of Thor. To clarify, Loki pilots the Destroyer to kill Thor, who has been stripped of his powers and rendered a mortal, which is all supposed to teach Thor a lesson in humility and of the strength of mortals as in the film but completely ignores Thor's characterization in the series. The sequel series Avengers Assemble remakes the final battle of the Avenger's film with the help of Impossible Man.
• Back at the Barnyard: "Pig Amok" is the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Amok Time" with Otis as Kirk and Pig as Spock.
• Big City Greens:
  • "Quiet Please" is a complete full-on G-rated parody of A Quiet Place.
  • The subplot of "Volunteer Tilly" is a take on The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
• Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.: "A Druff Is Enough": The heroes are distracted from their battle with aliens by cute, furry, voracious, and rapidly-reproducing creatures who eventually save the day. Like "The Trouble with Tribbles".
• The entire series of Over the Garden Wall is structured in accordance with Dante's Inferno.
• Sonic Boom had an episode called "The Biggest Fan", which was a blatant parody of Stephen King's novel Misery.
• For such a light series, Littlest Pet Shop (2012) takes from some rather dark sources. "Heart of Darkness" not only bases itself on Heart of Darkness but also Apocalypse Now, "Sleeper" takes heavily from Weekend at Bernie's, "Back Window" is a retelling of Rear Window, and "In the Loop" lifts most of the premise (including the solution) from Groundhog Day. On a softer note, "A Day at the Museum" is done in the general style of Garfield's Feline Fantasies.
• Ivanhoe: The King's Knight is about freeing King Richard I from his Austrian prison much like The Adventures of Robin Hood and the Robert Taylor Ivanhoe film.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • "The Wizard of Odd" has Candace taking on the Dorothy role.
  • "Excaliferb" is mostly a parody of The Princess Bride, with Karl reading the story to a sick Monogram, along with some The Lord of the Rings and Monty Python and the Holy Grail references thrown in.
  • Summer Belongs to You is an updated and a modified version of Around the World in Eighty Days, with a wager to travel around the world, numerous unexpected setbacks, and finally coming down to the last tick of the clock.
  • Perry's plotline in The Remains of the Platypus is based loosely off of the film, Memento. The episode is told in reverse chronological order, as Perry's story is recounted and explained, and he recovers missing memories, each scene offering an explanation for the one that came before it. He also regains his memories through a note on his chest, just like Leonard
• The BoJack Horseman episode "Fish Out of Water" borrows much of its plot from Lost in Translation (2003), with a washed-up actor going to a dreamlike foreign country to shoot promo material, not being able to understand the language, and trying to connect with a woman.
• The Mighty Magiswords episode "Grup Jam" is a huge love letter to Space Jam.
• The Real Ghostbusters episode "Citizen Ghost", well the reference is obvious.
• Peter Pan & the Pirates has an episode based on Alice in Wonderland.
• More than you can count in Bobby's World as the entire concept of the show is based around Bobby's imagination making parodies of famous movie plots. For a 6-year-old Bobby is quite a cinephile and has seen lots of movies that are nor even for kids.
• The Cleveland Show episode "Die Semi-Hard" was a thirty-minute borderline Shot-for-Shot Remake of Die Hard. Justified because the framing story is Cleveland actually telling "Die Hard" as a story to pass time while he's posing on a Nativity scene.
• Robot Chicken's sixth season had a skit parodying Of Mice and Men with the cast replaced with characters from Rocky and Bullwinkle. The skit ends with Rocky about to kill Bullwinkle in the same manner as George killing Lennie.
• My Friends Tigger & Pooh: "Rabbit and Turtle's Re-Run" is one for The Tortoise and the Hare. Apparently, the story was about their grandfathers and they re-enact it to find out how it really ended.
• Ready Jet Go!:
  • "My Fair Jet" is an entire reference to My Fair Lady, since Sean and Sydney try to get Jet to be a regular Earth kid the same way that Professor Higgins tries to get Eliza to become a proper lady.
  • "Endless Summer" is an entire reference to The Endless Summer, as both plots involve traveling to the Southern Hemisphere in search of summer.
• Ducktales 2017:
  • "The Beagle Birthday Massacre!" is an extended homage to The Warriors. Webby, Lena, and the nephews have to make it across town in the dead of night while dodging various themed versions of the Beagle Boys. Some of the gangs are at least roughly analogous to the ones from the movies, like the Tumblebums and the Hi-Hats both having a Monster Clown/Enemy Mime theme, or the Ugly Failures being Harmless Villains like the Orphans.
  • Deconstructed in "Louie's Eleven!". The whole episode is based on Ocean's Eleven, and while there is no knowledge of whether the movie exists in-universe, Glamour tells Louie that elaborate plots like Louie's have been done before and that there is nothing special about Louie's attempt.
• The Amphibia episode "Wax Museum" is a big tribute to Gravity Falls, with the main characters visiting the titular museum, a version of The Mystery Shack. Alex Hirsch even voices the frog versions of Grunkle Stan and Soos.
• 101 Dalmatians: The Series: "De Vil-Age Elder" is one to Brigadoon, with a town and its people vanishing from the outside world, and returning only for one day every one hundred years.
• The Owl House: Practically a good chunk of the plot is inspired by Harry Potter, made clear through it's many, many references and parodies. To a greater extent, the relationship between Luz and Amity is suspiciously similar to Akko and Diana's from Little Witch Academia to the point where you have to guess if the creator wanted them to get together in the end...
• Steven Universe: The "Lars of the Stars" episode, and the whole plotline that surrounds it, is inspired by Captain Harlock, no doubt made obvious by Lars's space pirate makeover and suave personality.
• Strange Hill High ended with a Christmas Episode parodying The Shining.
• Harley Quinn (2019): The episode "Dye Hard" is obviously one to Die Hard, with the plot being Harley and a reformed Joker trying to escape a tower under attack by brainwashed members of the Justice League.
• The David Macaulay animated special Pyramid shared, as his other shows did, several voice actors who starred in I, Claudius. Since a show about a royal burial monument is going to be about a royal family, the plot is like an Egyptian version of Claudius plus lectures on architecture. Of particular note is the third queen who patiently plots to get her son on the throne ahead of his rivals being voiced by Sian Phillips—aka Livia, Queen of Poisons.
• Archer of course leans into the spy tropes for its episode homages:
  • "The Archer Sanction" is basically The Eiger Sanction with a lot less competence.
  • "Swiss Miss" builds out the subplot from For Your Eyes Only where Bond has to rebuff the advances of an underaged athlete in a Swiss skiing village and turns it into a whole episode.
  • "The Holdout" has Archer run into a Japanese soldier who believes World War II hasn't ended, and in explaining history, he even lampshades the reference by saying, "And look, here's an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man about this exact thing!"
• The Duckman episode "Hamlet 2: This Time, It's Personal" is... well, it's right there in the episode title. Cornfed actually realizes that the titular character is trapped within the events of the famous play and tries to steer Duckman out of the tragic ending.
• ReBoot has an episode devoted to recreating The Prisoner. Enzo finds himself in a surreal recreation of his lost home, and seeks out the mysterious Number One, who seems to be in control of the place, while forced into the role of the villain, thwarted by his ostensible friends at every turn and forced to confront his inner darkness. Numerous key phrases and scenes from The Prisoner are referenced, including bits from the opening and the surreal climactic trial from Fall Out.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "Mandy the Merciless" is a parody of Dune, specifically God-Emperor of Dune, with Mandy in the role of Leto II (as the half-human, half-worm ruler of the universe) and Billy as Duncan Idaho.

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