When you find yourself trying to remember a show (or any works) that's on the tip of your tongue but just out of reach, come here - the collective brain of the TVTropes community can probably help. Post all the details you can remember (examples help). If you're looking for a trope, head over to Trope Finder. Have general questions about tropes? Visit Ask The Tropers!
Find a Show:
openNo Title Live Action TV
OK, this one goes beyond obscure so if you know it, then you are god of something or other.
Anyways, it was a failed pilot that aired in early '80s I believe (or late '70s). It was some kind of superhero show involving about 3 heros. They were up against this ridiculously badly scripted Nazi villain who —- I thought —- was named Colonel Gass. He had all the usual badass Nazi accessories and used to constantly snap his riding crop on his boot top and then wince in pain (perhaps liking it).
There was one final scene where he locks the heroes in a torture chamber (the room was labeled TORTURE CHAMBER in huge pink neon) and subjects them to a wall of advancing spikes that looked like foam rubber. I believe all this took place aboard a BLIMP.....
Gee, wonder why it never got picked up...
Any clues? I have tried searching on IMDB for the character name Colonel Gass but to no avail. Perhaps it was General or Commandant or just "Evil Nazi Douchebag."
openNo Title Western Animation
A black and white short film about a guy with elf ears going to something like a zoo/freak show where he sees a family of snowmen and an accordian playing robot behind cages
openNo Title Anime
I remember watching an English dub of an anime sometime in the late 90s to the early 2000s. It featured a scientist's daughter (no, not a Mad Scientist's Daughter, a sane one) who was sent to the future for some reason (ill with no cure or was it a war..?). She had this bird like machine thing which she'd lie in often, I think it talked. The girl collected a bunch of companions who could transform into some kind of insectoid-like armour, and one of them had fire powers. Eventually she died, and then a new girl (also from the past?) showed up. She cooked, had orange hair(?) and her name may have been Tofu. Someone had an answered query of this show before, but it's gone, and I've forgotten the show's name, again. It took me seven years to find it's name the last time, so any help is VERY much appreciated!
openNo Title Live Action TV
There was a show my friend told me about. She couldn't remember the title, but it was about this guy who got kid after a girl he slept with turned out to be a serial killer.
One of the jokes was she wanted a McRib sandwich and a McDonald's Shamrock shake for her last meal, because they were never served at the same time. She was working the system.
Edited by loracarolopenNo Title Western Animation
I KNOW I saw this cartoon in school once, around the early 90s/late 80s. It was about a girl who found a parrot (who I think was simply called "Parrot") in a floating box at the beach, and went on adventures with him. Along the way they met a sea monster with a hearing horn that was friends with the parrot, and some frog-creature who was good at imitation. (Maybe through the use of paper thin disguises, or actual magic; I can't remember much on that.)
I know that there was also a werewolf they had to trick at some point, and the big bads were some sort of giant-bird-THINGS that had taken something Parrot needed to get back. And somewhere in the final battle there were unicorns and a dragon.
Pretty sure this was also a one-shot film, and not a series. I'm wracking my brain for more, but that's all I can come up with. Sound familiar to anyone?
openNo Title Anime
Saw this anime on TV when I visited Japan in the early-to-mid-80s. A group of 4 or 5 people, each having a huge bike/trike/bike-with-sidecar of his/her own, led by a sexy black-haired lady. Their vehicles can combine into one giant mech. (Each vehicle is big enough for a person to fit into when it transforms for combining.) They seem to lean on the spy/cloak and dagger stuff and then they form the giant robot for the climactic battle of the episode. Been trying to look for this for decades.
openNo Title Anime
Another anime series I saw in the middle of the day in Japan in the early-to-mid-80s. Thinking back, it's sort of like Maison Ikkoku, focusing on a sweet, tall sexy black-haired lady and a guy on the mold of Godai and Lum's Ataru. There were occasional nude-shots of ladies (including the lead female character). The episode I got to watch was the one where there was a challenge between the boys and the girls. Not sure if it was between dorms or between boys-only and girls-only schools. Each would send a representative to sneak into the other dorm/school and steal some agreed artifact. The lead guy was the boys' rep and a big lady was the girls'. While the big lady just plowed herself through the defending boys, the male lead got himself seduced by the skimpily-clad girls (who kept slipping their tops off to him). He let himself play a game where he was chasing the girls blindfolded, but ending up getting hit by the girls on the head. By the end the girls won, the lead lady was feeling sorry for the unconscious lead character, apparently imploring the students to end the rivalry. Oh yeah, there was also some big dog that kept frothing in the mouth that somehow fit in the series. I also recall the closing credits, where there were different shots of the leading lady in various poses while the leading guy sat sulking on the side. The 2nd to the last shot of the lady was of her nude backside. Then the frothing dog came out, scaring the lead guy from his place, and the ending credits ended with the smiling fully-clothed lady carrying the scared guy.
openNo Title Anime
Yet another early-to-mid-80s anime series. This time the memory reminds me of Urusei Yatsura, except there's no Lum or aliens; just a bunch of down-to-earth high-schoolers with the slapstick humor. I remember characters who now remind me of Urusei Yatsura's Mendou, Ataru, and Sakura. The Sakura-like character is also very attractive to schoolboys who keep pestering her. She would literally send the boys flying, and as they soar through the air, the boys have their arms stretched out and their legs forming a diamond (soles clapped together), leaving jet contrails in their wake. The episode I got to watch was the gang visiting a temple and they seem to be taking up the challenge of breaking the temple's bell. The Mendo-like character uses a ladder to try to break the bell from the inside, while a couple of other guys are repeatedly punching and kicking it from the outside. The Ataru-like character comes on to the Sakura-like lady who slams him into the bell (as apparently was his plan). Apparently they fail and the priest gives them their consolation prizes, which are smaller versions of the bell. (The Ataru-like character gets a very small one for hitting the bell only once.) I'm really interested in knowing the series' title.
openNo Title Live Action TV
Right. I saw half an episode of some sort of Sci-Fi thing years ago. There's this alien invading Earth, and it's essentially a mountain-sized black lump that's leeching all the nutrients out of the soil or something. Apparently it was dropped down as a weapon by an alien race, but they can't drop more than one because the power required to sustain two at once is infinite.
Some dude figures out how to communicate with the black lump through his laptop. Black Lump invites him inside itself, and the dude accepts, only to find the alien was pulling his chain when it eats him.
The military manage to kill the thing by flying a jet through a passage in its body and killing its core. The lump withers and disappears, only for a second one to promptly pop up in its place. The episode ends with a general informing his men that he's authorised the use of nuclear weapons against the lump, telling them he wants to show the aliens that humanity is willing to burn their planet to keep them off.
This has bugged me for YEARS. Whoever can tell me the title, I will buy you a private jet when I am rich and famous and rule the world. I might also just be really grateful. One or the other.
openNo Title Film
It's an animated film with talking animals living in a forest. I remember that one of them was named Abigail (possibly a squirrel) and there was a skunk (or something black and white) named Michelle. IIRC, a poisonous gas was putting all the animals in a coma and Abigail and her friends were sent to find a way to revive everyone and save the forest.
Edited by snowfoxofdeathopenNo Title Live Action TV
I'm pretty sure what I'm looking for was a episode from one of those twilight zone / masters of science fiction shows with new sci-fi stories each week, probably from the 90s. The US army is camped out in the desert in the night observing a giant cube about 100 ft in length. The cube is a window into another universe where people live near a house in a beautiful lush meadow. The army can't hear but can see and the other side seems unaware of the army. They use a golf-ball launcher to shoot at it constantly to detect an opening in the barrier preventing them from passing.
One of the scientists becomes obsessed and when he sees an opening he goes through. He is then promptly eaten by the women and children who have giant fangs. The father pulls out a book, casts a spell and reverses the window so that they can see us.
It was so cool, I'd love to watch it again.
openNo Title Film
A comedy about a geeky son of a crime lord who is about to take the place of his father after the father died. An uncle I think, wants to kill the son to take his place by hiring to assassins but the two keep failing in a hilarious manner.
The second film I remember even less but have one character said, "You can run but you can't hide. OK, you can hide but we'll find you. OK, maybe we wont find you but we'll keep looking" or something to that effect.
openNo Title
This show with an apple headed man. He was a bad guy and chased these two kids around a dump, or maybe a ruined town. They were a boy and a girl, and cousins. Later it turned out that he was the boys mutated father who'd been locked in an underground room with radioactive apples. It might have been the hold of a ship.
Edited by PurbleopenNo Title Literature
Trying to recall a novel wherein the hero would put on a helmet and become a berserker, and he had to gain mastery over the helmet in order to use its strength effectively.
This is for my dad, actually - he thinks it was called "Deathstalker," but that's not turning up what he's looking for.
openNo Title Live Action TV
I remember this show on Nickelodeon—actually, I don't think this was the whole show, but some sort of silly segment:
There were these six people who were placed in a car, and the last one still in it wins. I remember a man named Mr. Gullible(?) who, as his namesake, was fooled into leaving the car early in the competition. There was also a girl who liked eggs for some reason.
openNo Title
Does anyone know what he says at 4:17? (now it does not have -word I do not know- or masking)
Used to be a TV Show on, pretty sure it was a Saturday Morning Live Action Show... It had something to do with a group of kids, pre-teen to teen, and a ghost or clown of some sort. Anyway, they made a wish maybe to be super heroes, and they got their wish granted, they were given superpowers in the form of bugs maybe? I kind of recall one of them being a blueish beetle dude with the great big T shaped Horn I think. There may have also been a mansion involved somehow.
Essentially
Clown/Genie/Ghost
Group of Kids
Superheroes (maybe bug like/related)
Wishes granted?
Edited by CornflakeJustice