Gratuitous Disco Sequence

Get down, get funky, yeah!

"Disco is not dead! Disco is LIFE!"

— Tony P, Mystery Men

A disco-inspired sequence in an otherwise unrelated work.

May be the doing of a Disco Dan, but such a character isn't even necessary to bring some Disco interlude out of nowhere.

Of course, this doesn't count if the show is set in The '70s, or has Disco renewal as its main subject (like the 2008 French movie titled, guess what, Disco). This trope is for gratuitous Disco moments with little justification (in-story)... besides the Rule of Cool.

May be used for a Dance Party Ending. Most extreme cases can be a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, and/or a full-fledged Disney Acid Sequence.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Haré+Guu:
  • The anime features a scene in an early episode where Haré comes home to see Guu and Weda have set up a Disco in the house and are getting down with their bad selves. Guu's even sporting an afro, which Haré realizes is the village elder's lost chest hair. Weda actually greets him with "Welcome to the hippest trip!" à la Soul Train.
  • And then, the second ending credits are Disco-themed.
• One Piece:
  • Zombie Night! Nuff said.
  • There's also a character in a later arc whose name is Disco. He dresses accordingly.
• The first ending of Sgt. Frog.
• Space☆Dandy. All of it, especially the soundtrack and the episode, "We're All Fools, So Let's All Dance, Baby".
• In a handful of early Urusei Yatsura episodes, notably "Lum-chan's Class Reunion". There's another early episode featuring Sakura's fiancé Tsubame attempting exorcisms at a disco.
• The second ending of Yakitate!! Japan.

Fan Works

• Thanks to the resemblance of her stance to the iconic image of Saturday Night Fever, Iku Nagae of Touhou Project is often portrayed doing something Disco-related in fanfictions. Ironically, her oarfish-themed clothing looks more like a salsa dancer's.

Films — Animated

• Animalympics has a musical number set at the "Noah's Ark Disco".
• Despicable Me:
  • Most notably, the Boogie Robots.
  • The Bee Gees' "You Should Be Dancing" plays out before the end credits roll.
• The Emperor's New Groove: Kronk's New Groove has Kronk and Birdwell baking bread to "Let's Groove" by Earth, Wind & Fire.
• A Goofy Movie:
  • In the first movie, Bigfoot starts grooving to the funky tones of The Bee Gees singing "Stayin' Alive".
  • The sequel has Goofy and Sylvia shaking their groove thing to, well, "Shake Your Groove Thing". There is a bit of a lampshade over the outdated aspect of the music, with the DJ blowing dust from the record and the Disco ball coming through a ceiling trap full of spiderwebs.
• In The Lorax, Ted's mom demonstrates why fake trees are better than real trees by showing off her Oak-a-matic's disco setting. Later in the film, she's shown to have a mini mirror ball hanging from the rearview mirror of her car.
• The Return of the King: The infamous forced march song from the orcs, "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way".

Films — Live-Action

• Airplane!:
  • In a flashback scene, two girl scouts end up in a bar room brawl. One of them smashes her head against a jukebox causing it to play The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" whereupon everybody in the bar starts dancing. Arguably the earliest example in Western media, as Airplane! was filmed in 1979-1980, just as the anti-Disco backlash was beginning.
  • Parodied in a later scene where a DJ announces his station is "WZAZ in Chicago, where Disco lives forever!" immediately before the title airplane destroys the WZAZ radio tower.
• Brazilian Star Wars has an extended one in the middle of the movie. The score also has a strong Disco influence.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: The whole "Guardians Inferno" music video, part of the Digital HD/Blu-Ray release for the movie, is one long, very gratuitous, very Disco sequence, slavishly following the style and limitations of a music video from the '70s. Featuring the main cast of the movie (although they're hard to recognize at first glance), the directors, David Hasselhoff and Stan Lee.
• In The Martian, the only music left behind (along with Mark Watney) when a manned mission to Mars is abandoned is Commander Lewis's extensive collection of disco music, much to Watney's ongoing chagrin. In the book the movie is based on, Commander Lewis also left behind a large stash of '70s TV shows, which Watney ends up spending much of his free time bingeing on.
• In Mystery Men, Casanova Frankenstein employs the Disco Boys as henchmen, and there is a full Disco Room in his castle.
• In The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, there is a flashback of the characters during the '70s in an appropriately Disco setting. Part of the gag is that the actors aren't made up to look any younger — they are just dressed in Disco-era fashion and with longer hair (including Nordberg [O.J. Simpson] with a Funny Afro so big he can't get through a door). Even more absurd, the Anna Nicole Smith character appears as a grown woman in the disco scene, even though the actress herself had barely reached puberty when the '70s ended.
• Ready Player One: After pulling out an instant dance floor from his inventory, Parzival, along with Art3mis, dance to the tune of the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" at the Distracted Globe.
• Disco is a Running Gag in You Don't Mess with the Zohan. This has more to do with Disco surviving outside the States for some time after it "officially died". Naturally, immigrant characters assume that it's still big in the US.

Literature

• The Tripods is about a Vichy Earth kept in Medieval Stasis by alien invaders, so something of an Anachronism Stew moment occurs when a spy infiltrating the alien city walks into a bar for their human collaborators called the Red Parrot, and finds a light ball shining multi-colored beams over dancing men and women.

Live-Action TV

• Stephen Colbert once indulged in this to Daft Punk's "Get Lucky". It Makes Sense in Context, since he was trying to get Daft Punk on The Colbert Report, but didn't succeed, so decided to do this instead.
• Doctor Who: In "The Power of the Doctor", the Master jump-starts the Thirteen Doctor's forced regeneration... by playing (and dancing on) Boney M.'s "Rasputin" (in 1916, to add to the Anachronism Stew), along with the obligatory light show. Well, at the moment he is Rasputin, so it kinda fits in a very twisted way.
• Lampshaded on Get a Life: Chris Elliot's character time-travels to the '70s, where his father and his old codger friends are all disco-fied.
• Gullah Gullah Island: An episode on the theme of dancing ends with the parents appearing in vintage '70s clothes, a mirror ball dropping down from the ceiling, and the cast performing a rousing rendition of "Let's Go to the Disco".
• In an episode of RoboCop: The Series, Virtual Ghost Diana gets corrupted by a computer virus and turns a bit nuts. As a result, she transforms her Hacker Cave into a full Disco, complete with blaring music, stroboscopic lights and real laser fire! Once he makes the music stop, Murphy finally comments that he always hated Disco.
• Whose Line Is It Anyway? had "Disco Boy" and "The Disco Kid" in the "Superhero" games. Greatest Hits and Song Styles did Disco from time to time.

Music

• David Bowie:
  • 1984 on Diamond Dogs.
  • The album Young Americans has disco influenced all over it. Ditto Station to Station, but Darker and Edgier.
• The Dear Hunter's music is typically Post-Hardcore-influenced Progressive Rock. On Act IV: Rebirth in Reprise, the song "King of Swords (Reversed)" clearly takes heavy influence from disco.
• Kylie Minogue owes her entire career to this. Her career had been fairly run of the mill until the disco-themed album Light Years was released and her fame skyrocketed, with no signs of ever slowing down for a long time to come.
• A fairly extreme example, Pain of Salvation is a fairly dark and brooding progressive metal band, with huge spiralling concept albums about the existence of God and a fair bit of deep introspection. Track five on their album Scarsick is called "Disco Queen". It's a bizarre 7/8 grooving Disco song. With falsetto vocals. Which go "You're my DISCO QUEEN! Let's Disco! Ooh-ooh oo-ee oo-ee, AHHHHH!" Although this is, of course, ming-mong Kryptonite, it's actually pretty good. They used it as an encore for the entire tour. It is extremely entertaining to watch the big, hairy, tattooed metalheads do the John Travolta-dance from Saturday Night Fever during said song.
• "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" on The Wall by Pink Floyd has an unexpected Disco groove, which helped the song become a Black Sheep Hit for the band, being their only single to top the chart.

Pinballs

• Deadpool: Dazzler's Disco Modes prompt the display to show one of these (to the point where the Premium and Limited Edition versions trigger a small disco ball within the machine itself).
• Getting an extra ball in Monster Bash plays a short clip of Dracula dancing under a disco ball.
• One of the modes in No Good Gofers is "Dance Party", where Bud and Buzz Summon Backup Dancers and perform a dance. Good luck trying to figure out what dancing has to do with gophers invading a golf course...

Pro Wrestling

• Brodus Clay debuted as a generic brute. He would resurface with an entirely new personality.
• Disco Inferno, of course. A disco ball would come down from the ceiling as part of his entrance.

Radio

• The "Hey, Roosta, I've Just Had This Really Hoopy Idea" sequence in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which Zaphod's cunning plan to escape a Fate Worse than Death is to use a free Body Debit card to teleport both himself and his friend Roosta to the universe's most unbearable discotheque, full of Robot Girl dancers who make the club look full, and nozzles on the wall that spray hot artificial sweat at attendees. The music used for this sequence is a horribly distorted version of The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" played backwards with beats removed. It's shameless Padding of the "the hero escapes and gets captured again" variety, albeit thinly justified by it turning out that Zaphod's captors set the whole thing up just to fuck with his head, but groovy as well as hilarious.
  "They are passing out! Spray them with adrenalin! Make the lights flash faster!"

Theatre

• In the 2013 stage musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, ditzy starlet Violet's undoing via a transformation into a giant blueberry becomes the focus of this in "The Villain Sucks" Song "Juicy!" (The token justification is that the experimental gum that triggers the transformation recreates a Sunday roast dinner from 1979.) The Inventing Room is turned into a disco as the Oompa-Loompas dance and even roller-skate about, while Violet — who subscribes to the Everything's Better with Sparkles trope with regards to her wardrobe — becomes the unwilling mirror ball at the center of it all.

Theme Parks

• The ending of the Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem ride at Universal Studios has the guests exiting out into a big disco dance party.

Video Games

• Afterlife: Much like its inspiration, SimCity, disasters are bound to happen in Afterlife, with one of them being the Disco Inferno, an event during which a giant demon in a jumpsuit dances through Hell, demolishing everything on the dance floor.
• In Battleground Z, the Disco Ball weapon's charged attack brings your Mii and any zombies surrounding you to a disco hall for a dance off. It ends with lightning striking the unfortunate zombie losers.
• The "Dance Battle" in Bookworm Adventures Volume 2, which doubles as the Big Lipped Alligator Moment of the series.
• The first level of the First-Person Shooter Cyberdillo, "Shoot That Funky Plunger, Dilloboy!" In this level, the Life Meter is labeled "FUNK."
• Dangun Feveron. Even its freaking soundtrack!
• At least one of the Destroy All Humans! games takes place in The '70s. Pox plans to use Disco to brainwash the world's population, much to Crypto's disgust (because he loathes Disco).
• The final third of Disney's Kim Possible 3: Team Possible takes place on Disco Station 9 in space. Enough said.
• Dungeon Keeper 2 has casinos, and when a creature wins the jackpot, everyone around it starts dancing to "Disco Inferno" by The Tramps.
• Dungeon Siege's expansion has a Secret Disco Level hosted by the Disco Krug.
• In Earthworm Jim 3-D, there is a whole stage devoted to a Disco. Which mixes this trope with Everything's Deader with Zombies to form the stage "Boogie Nights of the Living Dead". The stage comes complete with a weapon called the "Funky Gun".
• Endless Frontier has Suzuka-hime's Limit Break: complete with Disco ball, orange box, Noblewoman's Laugh, and More Dakka than God. In the sequel, gaining an upgrade to the attack adds bright spotlights and changes the single box of oranges to a pile of 3.
• One of these appears in Fancy Pants Adventures: World 3. You actually have to collect pieces of the disco ball from elsewhere in the level before it starts. You're rewarded with a new pair of pants if you do so.
• One of the levels of Jet Force Gemini has a bad guy bar, a disco-themed bad guy bar. On top of that, Juno happily disco dances during the end credits.
• There's a few rare instances in the LEGO Adaptation Game series where solving a puzzle will cause a disco sequence to start. (Disco makes an appearance somehow in every single game; it's just that sometimes it isn't gratuitous.)
• In LEGO Legends of Chima Online, Disco Fever is a status ailment thanks to the Grandmaster Dash weapon, which summons a disco ball and forces nearby enemies to drop everything and dance to disco music while taking damage.
• Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 11 have this as Liu Kang's Friendship.
• The good ending of The Neverhood.
• In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, when Mario uncovers some Boos he must fight, the Boos suddenly start dancing to disco music while Mario joins along before the fight commences.
  • Used again in Paper Mario: The Origami King, in which one of the Big Bad's lieutenants only likes disco music. Mario has to gather a bunch of Toads and lead them in a dance sequence to draw him out. Behold!
• The dancing zombie of Plants vs. Zombies, due to the original zombie bearing resemblance to Michael Jackson at an unfortunate time, was replaced with a Disco-tastic zombie.
• Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness has Miror B., a man with a Funny Afro colored like a Pokéball. In its predecessor, Colosseum, his music was salsa. Here? Disco.
• Ratchet & Clank has the Groovitron, a disco-ball grenade that causes all enemies and allies in its "blast zone" to dance until the music stops — leaving them vulnerable to attack.
• You get treated to one of these in Rayman Origins whenever you collect enough Lums to earn all of a level's rewards. The Big Bad also starts one up as a distraction in the final level in order to get a head start in running away from you.
• Rogue Squadron III opens with the Star Wars characters dancing to the Disco remix (yes, there was one) of the opening theme.
• Shadow Man has you fighting Marco, a psychopathic DJ with an affinity for disco music, whose boss theme is a funky disco jam with plenty of wah-pedal guitar. Certain versions of the game allow you to turn the entire game into a large disco party with the Disco Mode cheat.
• Skullmonkeys includes The 1970s as a collectible pickup scattered around levels. Whenever the player picks up enough of them, they're transported to, you guessed it, The 1970s. Accompanied by this music.
• In Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal, going into Amy's house after getting all medals results in... Sonic and pals doing the robot.
• The Stanley Parable HD Remix has an Easter Egg which makes the screens in the Monitor Room flash colored lights as a funky tune plays.
• Dance Battler maestre Eddy Gordo in the Tekken series started off with an alternate "outfit" that was treated as a (relatively obscure) alternate character, Tiger Jackson. No word yet on whether Capoeira works with a disco beat in real life..
• In Undertale, the glam-rock-inspired Mettaton EX sometimes attacks using a disco ball that fires lasers, during his boss battle. He also performs a barrage of dramatic dance poses the entire time.
• Jimmy T. from the WarioWare series is a Disco fiend, as is the rest of his family. They all wear multi-colored Funny Afroes, shades, and bell-bottom pants.

Web Animation

• The Musical Episode of Red vs. Blue had one of these, complete with lights coming out of nowhere.
  Set cannon to funk!

Webcomics

• The Chosen Four: Jeff dances in front of the sphinx. Specifically, he disco dances.
• In El Goonish Shive, Dan triggers this when he tries out the "dance" emote in the MUD that he plays.
• In the webcomic Giselle by Carlos G., just guess what the Butler does in his spare time.
• In Skin Horse storyline "Purple Waves", one of the trials to enter Tigerlily Jones's Crime Lair is the Disco Dance Challenge.
• In Swords, behold the Disco Blade! A magic sword that can apparently summon such sequences on a whim.

Western Animation

• The Backyardigans episode "The Quest for the Flying Rock" has Disco as its music genre.
• Captain Flamingo: In "A Boy and His Yeti", the only way to stop Wendell from catching the Yellow Gulch Yeti is for Milo to get the last Lemming Scouts badge that he doesn't have, and it is revealed to be disco dancing. Even if Lizbeth is concerned about it due to the yeti hating noise and just wants to be left alone, the yeti eventually comes in the cave and starts dancing.
• Three of the ChalkZone music videos have had Disco-inspired numbers: "Making Faces", "Go Pop", and "Flashlight".
• In Code Lyoko episode "Straight to the Heart", it is revealed that Jim is a former Disco dancer. Though he considers this an Old Shame at first, in "William Returns" he gains some fans and makes a return as "Paco, King of Disco".
• Duck Dodgers: The episode "Diamond Boogie".
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • The Crimson Chin has a Seventies Disco version of him.
  • There was also that time Jorgen Von Strangle disco danced with his 1970s counterpart.
  • And never forget... MOUNT DISCO!
• Family Guy:
  • Jesus turns Water into Funk.
  • When Stewie wishes on his birthday candles, he entertains the idea of dropping bombs, but then decides to wish for everyone to Disco dance, complete with Disco ball and retro clothing, as seen above.
  • Peter, Quagmire, Cleveland and Joe walk into a skating rink as rookies. A few minutes later, Disco Ensues to Walter Murphy's A Fifth of Beethoven.
• Mirror Master's holographic discotheque of doom in the "Flash and Substance" episode of Justice League Unlimited.
• From Phineas and Ferb's many musical moments, there is...
  • "Fabulous"
  • "Disco Miniature Golfing Queen"
  • During the boys' Robot Rodeo, a thick mist messed up Isabella's hair — causing the episode to end on a hilariously random note: "Izzy's Got the Frizzies."
• In the The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Brush with Danger", the penguins need to get past a laser-protected area in a museum. They place a disco ball on the floor that reflects the lasers away while they disco dance in a stack on top of it.
• The Powerpuff Girls: The episode "Boogie Frights" revolves around the Boogie Man blocking out the sun with a giant disco ball and holding a never-ending dance party as he and his monster friends terrorize the citizens of Townsville.
• In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Moon Circus", part of Carrot's famous flip is to do a disco dance.
• Rocket Power: Otto and Reggie's dad competed in "Freestyle Roller Disco".
• Rocko's Modern Life: Heffer did disco routines to stock music in "Wallaby on Wheels" and "Floundering Fathers".
• In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Gang Busters", Hamton keeps messing up the music genre the characters are singing (rap), and one instance has him Disco dancing while Fifi, Shirley, and Elmyra sing "Disco Inferno".
• This happens Once per Episode in the Yogi Bear Spin-Off Galaxy Goof-Ups (which originally aired as part of Yogi's Space Race.) Every week, Yogi and his team always find an excuse to ignore the plot and shake their collective things alongside the most Deranged Animation that Hanna-Barbera's animators could air on Saturday Mornings.

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