Some Closing Credits do not have their own specific background music, but rather feature a medley of various music pieces from the movie/game. These pieces could be direct copies of the original score or be remixes of the same, in which case it also serves as a Reprise Medley.
Doesn't really count if it's just an expanded mix of just one prior music piece, direct or remixed.
Compare the visual counterpart, the Credits Montage. See also Medley Overture.
Examples
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Film - Animated
- The end credits music for Disney's Dinosaur combines pieces of "The Egg Travels", "Aladar and Neera", "Breakout/It Comes With a Pool", "Raptors/Aladar Meets the Herd", and "Inner Sanctum/The Nesting Grounds".
- Ice Age: The Meltdown mixes three tracks from the movie: "Mini-Sloths Sing-A-Long", "The Meltdown", and "Mammoths".
- The Rescuers Down Under features an excellent end credits piece using the score's main themes.
- Recess: School's Out was going to use one, until with the other two songs in the credits, they didn't need it. It was later released on the movie soundtrack.
- The credits music of The Super Mario Bros. Movie is made up of a "best-of" mix of reorchestrated themes from the franchise at large.
- The second part of the credits for Toy Story combines pieces of "Woody and Buzz" and "Infinity and Beyond".
- The end credits for Blue's Big Musical Movie used a medley of previous background music used for the credits in other episodes.
- In Turning Red, the credits contain all the 4*Town songs in their entirety plus the track "Meilin Lee" from the score.
Film - Live-Action
- All the Star Wars movies. Though in the credits for Revenge of the Sith, the only piece that was written for the movie was Battle of the Heroes: the rest is taken straight from A New Hope, tying both trilogies together.
- John Williams is quite fond of this. Notable example: the closing credits from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which consisted of seven themes from the film back-to-back. And was awesome.
- Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
- Conan the Barbarian (1982) by Basil Poledouris
- The end credits of Star Trek (2009) are a mashup of the new theme ("Enterprising Young Men") and Alexander Courage's original "Theme from Star Trek".
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children plays a character theme medley over the credits.
- The Back to the Future sequels. As an example, Part III features a suite with the film's Western theme, the love theme, and the train theme sandwiched by the main theme of the series.
- Masters of the Universe.
- Independence Day.
- The theatrical release of The Abyss was the first James Cameron film (but not the last) to feature double-column/speeded-up end credits on account of all the people involved, so Alan Silvestri's end credit suite features "Finale," a lot of "Bud On The Ledge" and the ending of "Back On The Air" (the music for Bud and the aliens heading to the surface) without the choir. When it was released on video, it had a slower and one-column only roll which therefore lasted much longer, and had a much longer suite to match made up of "Finale," "The Pseudopod," "Resurrection," a reprise of the first part of "Finale" (for the spire rising scene), and the excerpts from "Bud On The Ledge" and "Back On The Air."
- Team America: World Police
- 9 uses a medley of themes from the film, mainly Winged Beast and Burial, with a remix of The Machines at the beginning. It does not appear on the official soundtrack, possibly because end credits medleys tend to not appear on soundtrack albums if they're edited together from already recorded cues (the Intrada issue of RoboCop is an exception); Williams' Credits Medleys are usually also RepriseMedleys.
- In all three The Lord of the Rings movies, after an Award-Bait Song, there's a medley of music for the film, including some deleted and never heard before pieces. The Extended Editions add from 10 to 20 minutes of additional music over the Fan Credits. The Hobbit seems to be following the same pattern.
- Some of that additional music was recorded especially for the credits. Fellowship's In Dreams
, heard right after Enya's "May It Be", might or might not countnote , but The Return of the King has a homage to Wagner at the end of the theatrical cut's credits
, plus a whole song called Bilbo's Song
at the end of the Extended Edition's Fan Credits.
- Some of that additional music was recorded especially for the credits. Fellowship's In Dreams
- Serenity uses one of these, finishing with "You Can't Take the Sky from Me", the theme song of the original Firefly TV series.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory features all five of the film's musical numbers (the puppet show and the four Oompa-Loompa songs) in an extended, mostly instrumental medley.
- Popeye ends with a lushly-orchestrated instrumental medley that includes "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man", "I Yam What I Yam", "I'm Mean", and "He Needs Me".
Music
- The title track of Nightwish's Imaginaerum concept album functions as this with full orchestra only versions of different parts of the album.
Television
- Skins does this at the end of season 2 to Wild World to shockingly poignant effect.
- The Wonderful World of Disney features a medley of Disney songs over the credits.
- The Academy Award ceremony has ended on one of these since the early 1990s, combining famous orchestral movie themes with instrumental versions of songs: "Hooray for Hollywood" (serves as Bookends), "That's Entertainment", the main theme from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing", "Oklahoma!", "Take My Breath Away", the themes from Chariots of Fire, Born Free, and Around the World in 80 Days (1957), "Moon River", "Chim-Chim-Cher-ee", "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)", "Ready to Take a Chance Again", "Fame", "Flashdance...What a Feeling", "Gonna Fly Now", The Raiders March, and the Star Wars main title. It's never been updated, possibly because genuine movie theme songs with lasting appeal have been relatively rare since the 1980s.
Theatre
- Many stage musicals do this with their outmarches (also known as exit music).
- Annie uses an abridged version of the Medley Overture as exit music.
- Bells Are Ringing's exit music uses "Just In Time," "I Met A Girl" and "The Party's Over."
- Brigadoon's exit music uses "Down on MacConnachy Square," "Heather on the Hill" and "Almost Like Being In Love."
- Camelot's curtain call and exit music uses the title song, "If Ever I Would Leave You" and "The Lusty Month of May."
- Cabaret's exit music uses "Wilkommen," "Why Should I Wake Up" and the title song.
- Closer Than Ever recycles its framing tunes, "Doors" and "Closer Than Ever," for (respectively) the second bows and exit music.
- The Fantasticks, for its exit music, uses "Try To Remember," "There Were You" and "Soon It's Gonna Rain."
- Finian's Rainbow's exit music uses "Old Devil Moon," "If This Isn't Love" and "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?" (The last is marked "espressivo schmaltzando" in the score.)
- Flower Drum Song's exit music uses "You Are Beautiful" and "Grant Avenue."
- Follies reuses the Medley Overture up to the sixth bar of "Rain on the Roof," but segues immediately to "Beautiful Girls."
- Funny Girl uses "Don't Rain on My Parade" and the "People" coda for the curtain call, and then "I'm the Greatest Star," "People," "You Are Woman, I Am Man," "Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat" and one phrase of "The Music That Makes Me Dance" for exit music.
- Gigi (the Screen-to-Stage Adaptation) uses "Thank Heaven For Little Girls" and the Can-Can "At Maxim's" for exit music.
- Hello, Dolly! uses "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," "It Only Takes A Moment" and the title song for exit music.
- I Can Get It For You Wholesale, after using "Ballad Of The Garment Trade" for the Curtain Call, has an exit medley of "The Sound Of Money," "Who Knows" and "Have I Told You Lately?"
- The King and I uses "I Whistle A Happy Tune" and "Shall We Dance?" for exit music.
- La Cage aux folles's exit music uses the title song and "The Best Of Times."
- Legally Blonde uses "What You Want" and "Legally Blonde".
- Mame's exit music uses "Mame," "Open A New Window," a short bridge of "My Best Girl," "If He Walked Into My Life," "We Need A Little Christmas" and the title song again.
- Man of La Mancha's exit music uses "Little Bird," "Dulcinea" and "The Impossible Dream"
- Milk and Honey's exit music uses the title song, "Independence Day Hora," "Shalom" and "Chin Up, Ladies."
- The Music Man's exit music uses "It's You," "Lida Rose," "Goodnight, My Someone" and "Seventy-Six Trombones."
- My Fair Lady's exit music uses "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face," "With A Little Bit Of Luck," "On The Street Where You Live," "Get Me To The Church On Time" and the coda of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly."
- No Strings's exit music is a swinging medley of "The Sweetest Sounds," "Maine" and the title song.
- On a Clear Day You Can See Forever's exit music uses "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?", "On the S.S. Bernard Cohn" and the title song.
- On the Town plays miscellaneous portions of "I Can Cook, Too," the "Times Square" ballet music, "Lonely Town" and "Lucky To Be Me" for bows, followed by "Some Other Time," "Lucky To Be Me" and "Ya Got Me" as exit music.
- Paint Your Wagon's exit music uses "Wand'rin' Star," "I Still See Elisa," "I Talk To The Trees" and "I'm On My Way."
- Pippin, after a shortened version of "Magic To Do" for bows, uses "Corner Of The Sky" and "No Time At All" as its exit music.
- The Sound of Music's exit music uses the title song, "Do-Re-Mi" and "Sixteen Going on Seventeen."
- South Pacific's exit music uses "Some Enchanted Evening" and "Bali Ha'i."
- Tanz Der Vampire manages to break the fourth wall with theirs- the final song of the show represents the vampires symbolically accepting and turning their audience, and the majority of the exit music that begins playing as the likely stiff-legged audience members squeeze slowly into the aisles to leave is exactly the same as the playout for the song "Ewigkeit", which ends with the actors playing vampires limping up the aisles to leave.
- The Unsinkable Molly Brown, following "I Ain't Down Yet" for bows, uses "I'll Never Say No" and "Belly Up To The Bar, Boys" for exit music.
Video Games
- Castlevania: several of the Metroidvanias, beginning with Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin mixes in a theme that can only be heard if you avoid the Bad Ending. If you get the Bad ending in that game, you just get the Game Over screen after the cutscene.
- Given how famous the ones in the movies are (see above), video games from Star Wars Legends usually do this as well.
- Neverwinter Nights.
- Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts features an impressive score that weaves the themes of several main areas into a monster medley as the credits are viewed. The credits include the themes to Mumbo's Test-O-Track, Log BOX 720, Terrarium of Terror, Gruntilda's Challenge, Jiggoseum, Banjo Land, Nutty Acres and Gruntilda's Final Battle.
- Very commonly used in the Bomberman series.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy V uses a partial remix of "The Dragon Spreads its Wings" in its end theme, followed by a slowed down version of "ExDeath's Castle" as a bridge into a march version of "Four Valiant Hearts" ending with a coda based on the first movement.
- Final Fantasy VI deserves special mention because it manages to mix together every single character theme along with the obligatory "Prologue" music in a massive 20-minute long ending sequence.
- Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Crisis Core have similar medleys that both begin with a remix of The Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII, which is the only time said piece of music is featured on the respective soundtracks. Final Fantasy VII Remake uses a medley of "Aerith's Theme," the "Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII," the "Whispers' Theme" and finishing with "Aerith's Theme" once more.
- Dissidia creates a medley of the ending themes from the first ten games! The prequel does the same thing, but includes ending themes from Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XII, and Final Fantasy XIII as well. It is also bookended by the opening and closing bars of the song Final Fantasy at the start and end. Listen close for them.
- The end of Final Fantasy X (pre credits) uses two of the three main themes.
- Both Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII of the so-called Lightning Saga have this. Final Fantasy X-2 has a theme titled simply "Closing Credits" that is a medley of "Caius's Theme," "Paradox," "Noel's Theme," "Future/Serah's Theme" and "Yeul's Theme." Lightning Returns has "Credits ~Light Eternal~," which uses "FINAL FANTASY XIII -Miracles-," "Memories of Happier Days," "Snow's Theme ~Final Words~," "The Ark," "Caius's Theme," "Lightning's Theme" and "Blinded By Light."
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- All the Mega Drive games did this, combining every stage theme into one medley with a reprise of the title theme at the very end, with the exception of Sonic 3 which had an original track instead of the usual medley. Both episodes of Sonic the Hedgehog 4, the Sonic Rush games, and Sonic Generations do the same thing.
- The beta version of Sonic 3 actually had its own ending medley
too, where it would play music from all stages in it and Sonic and Knuckles (except for Carnival Night and Mushroom Hill Zones, for some reason), but was very likely cut from release version due to the splitting of the game into two parts. That beta is for a game called Sonic 3 Limited Edition which would've had both games on one cart. It's not a Sonic 3 beta per se.
- Occurs frequently in the The Legend of Zelda games. Examples include The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Breath of the Wild.
- Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario utilize medleys of their soundtracks in their credits music. The latter's sequel games each play a unique track over their own credits instead until Paper Mario: Color Splash returns to the medley concept.
- Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has a whole mix of the different theme tunes as the credits music, starting from Plack Beach, to parts of Cavi Cape, to parts of the underwater theme, the Dimble Wood theme and the Toad Town theme. Dream Team and Paper Jam follow suit, using their own respective soundtracks to create credits medleys.
- Super Mario Galaxy.
- Mario Kart Wii.
- Super Smash Bros. Brawl uses the themes from each respective game in the series (64, Melee, and Brawl). This is done again for the credits sequence of the 3DS and Wii U instalments.
- Wario Land 4
- EarthBound (1994) and Mother 3, if only for the cast roll segment; the rest of the credits have individual compositions.
- The ending credits sequence of EquestriaBound features a medley of music from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic that was not used in the game proper. Listen to it here.
- The WarioWare series, starting with WarioWare: Twisted!.
- The NA version of Wild ARMs.
- Call of Duty: World at War combined three themes into one piece. A Heavy Metal guitar and drum kit were added on top of them, as were some techno bits accompanied by taiko drums.
- Live A Live has a credits sequence that plays all of the main characters' leitmotifs one after another.
- VVVVVV, with the music being the background music of various areas of the gamefield.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep features a medley of the three main characters' leitmotifs (Terra, Aqua, and Ventus in order), the Neverland battle theme, the three Disney Princesses' worlds' battle themes, and the game's arrangement of "Dearly Beloved".
- Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] also does this, using the battles themes for Traverse Town, Country of the Musketeers and Prankster's Paradise, followed by the Dream Eater's theme, the battle theme for La Cité des Cloches and finished with Dearly Beloved.
- Kingdom Hearts III follows suite. The first 10 minutes use the battle themes for Toy Box, Arendelle, The Caribbean, San Fransokyo, Olympus, Kingdom of Corona, and Monstropolis in that order, then it surges into Guardando nel Buio* , before ending with a triumphal replise of Dearly Beloved.
- Mega Man 6 credits has snippets of the Robot Masters' stage themes over their respective appearances in the Curtain Call.
- Fire Emblem games frequently do this, starting as far back as the original game; more often than not, generally in conjunction with a unique composition. For example, [[Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem has "Ending Medley B
" from Book II.
- The DSiWare game Art Style: Pictobits ends with one, incorporating bits and pieces from all of the remixes featured in the game.
- The credits theme of Patapon and Patapon 2 is a medley of songs introduced the games.
- Star Fox Command.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising
- The voice actor credits in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots run to a brief medley of songs from the series, which ends in Big Boss's theme. The game then cuts to another cutscene with that character until the rest of the credits play.
- Played with in Rockman 4 Minus Infinity—the credits theme is a medley of three credits songs from the Kirby series - Super Star, Block Ball, and Dream Course, in that order.
- The credits of Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F is backed by a medley of various instrumental versions of in-game songs.
- Crash Twinsanity uses one of these.
- This is done in the second and third installments of the Wing Commander series.
- The ending sequence to Shovel Knight (before the credits roll) plays a song called "A Return to Order", which plays a medley of each of the bosses' stage themes.
- The "ending" of Minecraft is backed by a medley of the title themes.
- P.N.03 does this with the Mission 3 and Final Mission themes.
- Undertale has a two-part ending piece called "Bring It In, Guys!" and "Last Goodbye" which consists of a large remixed medley of most of the game's important leitmotifs, and a reprise of the final boss music, respectively.
- LittleBigPlanet: From the second game onwards, as the previous ones only showed the credits if you selected them from the start menu. LBP2 uses "Sleepyhead", then the funk remix of "Also sprach Zarathustra", and finally "Ghosts"; while LBP3 starts with "Energy" (which, strangely, isn't obtainable in Create Mode except through a Good Bad Bug) and then goes through the interactive themes for Manglewood, The Ziggurat, and Bunkum Lagoon. LBP Karting also averts this, and just plays the Gardens remix the whole way through.
- Inverted in a strange way in Persona 3. The FES rerelease features a new opening with a new song, which combines and remixes elements of several other songs in the game - most notably the credits theme.
- A lot of the more recent Kirby games ever since Kirby's Return to Dream Land often do this with their end credits music, taking recurring music pieces from throughout the game and making a medley out of it for the credits.
- The credits of Them's Fightin' Herds contains a medley of every character's stage theme.
- The credits of Tales of Berseria features a medley of the themes of every one of the game's playable characters - Velvet Crowe, Eizen, Eleanor Hume, Laphicet, Magilou and Rokurou Rangetsu.
Western Animation
- The music that plays during the credits of the first BIONICLE trilogy are all pieces of the in-movie score, though not full themes, bur rather different samples cut together in such a way, they sounds as if they were composed as standalone musical themes exclusively for the credits. Also, they're beautiful.
- The episodes of The Simpsons that parody musicals, such as "Supercalifragilousexpectiali(Annoyed Grunt)cious", "The President Wore Pearls", and "My Fair Laddie" have instrumental medleys of the songs performed.
- The credits music for VeggieTales: The Ultimate Silly Song Countdown is a dance remix medley of all the songs featured in the countdown.