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Musical Episode

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Phineas: What do you say? We'll do all the same things, but we'll break into spontaneous singing and choreography with no discernible music source!
Ferb: Hmmm.... What assurance would we have that everyone else would also break into song and do the same thing?
Phineas: I don't know. I think they probably will.
Ferb: Fair enough. I'm in.
— Phineas and Ferb, "Rollercoaster: The Musical!"
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Once in a while, a show will shake things up and break the formula. One way of doing that is by turning the show into The Musical for an episode.

A Musical Episode is structured around the cast breaking into song (and possibly dance) throughout the episode. It might use an in-universe justification, such as a Battle of the Bands, some sort of weirdness, or a new character causing all this cheery singing. Alternately, it can play like a Broadway show where it's just taken for granted that some events will be dramatized through song and dance.

This trope is sometimes used to showcase the vocal, dance or other talents, other than acting, of members of the cast, which do not usually get revealed during the normal activities of the series. It really helps that the members of your cast who get singing parts for the episode really can sing. The next best option is to hire a singer who sounds reasonably close to the actor and teach the actor how to lip sync.

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Opinions on a Musical Episode can differ wildly. Many will enjoy the up-beat, unexpected change of pace, while many will dislike it for that very reason. Also, like any premise, the songs and choreography have to be good, or else you're doomed from the start. But if they are good, such episodes tend to be very memorable because songs tend to stick in people's heads.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime 
  • Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo's 48th episode had them defeat a foe by singing him into submission. Even by Bo-BoBo's standards, it's amazingly crazy.
  • The English dub of Duel Masters randomly has Shobu and Kokujo be forced to come up with an inspirational song before they can duel.
  • Jewelpet Sunshine had the characters performing West Side Story in one episode.
  • Kanamemo's fourth episode would be an amusing little story about the Fuhshin News employees attempting to get to the pool on its own, but the anime takes it a step further and adds song and dance numbers to the mix. No explanation is given for the singing.
    • If it helps, Kana is as confused as the rest of us.
  • One episode of Kure Nai depicts the characters' attempts to rehearse a musical for a local festival, which eventually leads them to come up with their own material from scratch. It turns out that it is a ploy by Benika to keep Murasaki entertained - which by and far succeeds.
  • While Love Live!, being an Idol Singer show, naturally features a musical number Once an Episode, The Movie goes into full Broadway musical mode.
  • Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water had a Character Song episode at the end of its infamous Island/Africa arc.
  • One Piece: The short movie Dance Carnival could be considered a dance episode (Dance special?). It starts on the aptly called Mirrorball Island. While trying to escape the Marines, Jango hypnotizes everyone to dance 'till they drop. Including the Straw Hats. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Episode 17 of Space Dandy. Baberly Hills High School ranks students based on musical ability, so naturally this resulted.
    Meow: The glee [Dandy] must be feeling right now...
  • Valvrave the Liberator delivered a rather cheesy musical moment in the end of episode 5, in hopes to get more supporters from both factions.

    Asian Animation 
  • Lamput has an episode that is a non-dialogue variant (the characters do not speak in proper dialogue) and rather neatly packs the concept into 15 seconds. Fat Doc and Slim Doc chase Lamput into some trash cans and accidentally create a drum solo with said trash cans that takes up most of the episode trying to catch him. Once they're done playing, a crowd of people who heard their performance and loved it carry them away.
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    Comic Books 
  • The ninth issue of Tomorrow Stories features a Greyshirt musical, as in a literal stage production; Greyshirt: Indigo Sunset later established that the man himself took the title role at one showing. Critics are astounded at Greyshirt's singing and dancing, claiming that he could've been another Gene Kelly.
  • The story Deadbeats! from Hack/Slash Trailers: Part 2. It involves zombies invading Broadway.
  • In 2000 AD, Robo-Hunter appeared in a story called "Play It Again, Sam." Set during National Song Year, it saw characters in the strip regularly break in to song-and-dance routines as Sam Slade set about defeating the anti-robot Human League.

    Comic Strips 
  • Nodwick had one of these, courtesy of Arthax and a "Scroll of Thespia".
  • The Doctor Who Magazine strip "Planet Bollywood" has the Eleventh Doctor and Amy land on a planet where everyone breaks into song and dance routines.

    Fan Works 

    Films 

    Let's Play 
  • NintendoCapriSun did this in his Plants vs. Zombies series, for the ninth episode which was aptly titled "The All Singing Episode". From around the one minute mark up to the end of the second level of the episode at 16 minutes, his commentary is delivered (save for a couple of brief lines) entirely through song in time with the music of the game. This accomplishment didn't go unrecognized, as the episode has over 6 million views, several times that of the episodes released next to it. Even more impressively, eight years later during his revisit of the game for the No Sunflower challenge series, he did a sequel in the form of episode 10, "The All-Singing Episode 2!" in which he delivers commentary in song with the game's music as he did in the original... over the course of all 23 minutes of the episode, from start to finish, only speaking in whisper for the final 15 or so seconds of the episode.

    Literature 
  • Spellsinger, the fifth book of Avalon: Web of Magic. A benefit concert and singing contest insert about three songs into the book... through just printing the lyrics in the text. Some of the songs were Defictionalized and released on CD to promote the book.
  • How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford is a Star Trek Expanded Universe novel in the form of a Musical Episode. All (almost all) of the songs are pastiches of pre-existing songs so they'll be recognizable in text. Unfortunately this also means that filming it would probably be a massive copyright violation.
  • Of The Four Gospels, Luke is the one that has people bursting into song.
  • A Storm of Swords features several songs written in-page, as part of A Song of Ice and Fire. "The Rains of Castamere" has gone on to be a Breakaway Pop Hit from page to life, and plays a key role in the books as Leitmotif.
  • Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls, the sixth book in the Brentford Trilogy by Robert Rankin is about Poole and Omalley putting on a musical adaptation of Armageddon: The Musical, also by Rankin. Several songs based on the earlier book are included in the text.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Afterparty is a comedic murder mystery that uses its "Rashomon"-Style set up to shift genres with each narrator. Episode three is a musical episode from the perspective of Yasper (Ben Schwartz).
  • Ally McBeal had one at the end of season 3. Randy Newman wrote part of the music for this.
  • "Once More, With Feeling" from the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode bizarrely sends up the musical genre (and its respective subgenres) as a whole, musical and dance genres from rock to ballet, and (in typical Joss Whedon fashion) the series itself with wicked glee, yet also manages to fit plot and Character Development in as well and come up with a plausible (for Buffy) explanation for why everyone's singing.
  • Blancanieves y los siete churín churin chunfláis which is a three-part episode of El Chapulín Colorado retelling the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story (or more exactly Walt Disney's version, the episode is even dedicated to him) naturally has also a lot of musical numbers. As it is also a crossover with El Chavo del ocho may also count as a musical episode for the latter.
  • Chicago Hope had the fourth-season episode "Brain Salad Surgery", intended as an homage to Dennis Potter. Dr. Aaron Shutt suffered a brain aneurysm that caused him to hallucinate the rest of the hospital staff singing and dancing.
  • Code Black had a patient in "Better Angels" perceive the activity in the ER as scenes from a stage musical.
  • Cold Case had "Creatures Of The Night" (a murder during a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show), "Triple Threat" (about a young Russian ballerina who defected and became a pop singer) and "Wilkommen" (about a guy who got cast on a production of ''Cabaret).
  • The second season of Community had "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" which, since it was also their homage to the Rankin Bass stop motion Christmas specials, had several short songs, and the third season Christmas Episode "Regional Holiday Music" was a blatant Glee parody.
  • Even Stevens did an episode titled "Influenza: The Musical" in which Ren has a fever induced dream in which the whole school would randomly burst into song, and Ren herself had to sing a song in the climax.
    "We went to the moon in 1969..."
    "I've got chicken soup, delicious chicken soup soup ..." *cue Ren screaming in terror*
  • The Flash had a musical crossover with Supergirl, featuring many actors from the Arrowverse who have had experience in the music business, especially the two shows' respective leads, who were both on Glee. And the villain? Who other than the Music Meister, played by fellow Glee alum Darren Criss!
  • On the heels of the success of Glee, FOX had a musical week including Fringe. Which turned out to be a Noir Episode as well — a double case of Formula-Breaking Episode. The noir musical was simply the fictional story within a Framing Device.
  • Good Times had two. One doubled as a Christmas Episode while the plot of the other was a talent show to raise money for a daycare center in their building.
  • Grey's Anatomy had one. Similarly to the Scrubs example, it was from the point of view of a patient; though the patient was one of the doctors in the main cast. She is played by Sara Ramirez, an actress/singer who was in Monty Python's Spamalot.
  • The episode "Bedtime Stories" of How I Met Your Mother is a spoken-word equivalent of this in which Marshall attempts to calm down Marvin on a crowded bus by telling him bedtime stories; the trope applies because the entire episode is spoken in rhyme (as are the stories). Lin-Manuel Miranda guest stars as Gus, the guy sitting on the bus next to Marshall and Marvin, and supplies an entire free-style rap verse when Marshall is unable to rhyme the word "Canada" (Gus eventually uses the slant rhyme "janitor").
    • Then there's the episode "Girls vs. Suits", which ends with an extravagant musical number in which Barney declares his love for suits.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
    • The fourth season had its musical episode where Charlie actually wrote and then directed a musical, not that his friends would let it be that simple.
    • Season 12 has "The Gang Turns Black" where the gang are watching The Wiz on TV during a thunderstorm, and a jolt of lightning causes them to not only appear black to everyone else, but also be trapped in a musical as well. It turns out to be a dream that their neighbor, Old Black Man, is having about them.
  • The Kamen Rider Faiz Hyper Battle Video, where the characters suddenly break out into song and dance for no apparent reason as part of Smart Brain's latest plot. They lampshade the fact that they're singing, and in the end Takumi ends up defeating the Orphenocs with a sonic blast from a radio which was causing the whole thing. And then Takumi wakes up.
  • Lexx had its musical episode in "Brigadoom". In it, the crew of Lexx encounters a mysterious theater floating in space and ends up performing Kai's backstory on stage. Of particular interest is the use of theater-grade special effects, so that a fleet of spaceships is represented by people waving miniatures on poles instead of the show's usual computer-generated effects.
  • The "Land of the Luvvies" episode in The Legend of Dick and Dom features a much-feared tribe of Luvvies who spread song and dance through the neighbourhood.
  • Little Howard's Big Question has an episode called "Can We Sing For A Whole Episode?".
  • Lucifer (2016) often includes scenes of the cast singing but season five's "Bloody Celestial Karaoke Jam" is actually structured as a musical. God visiting his sons on Earth leads to the people around them breaking into musical numbers which they forget as soon as they're done singing.
  • Malcolm in the Middle had an episode in which Dewey turns his parents' fight into an opera. The episode is appropriately entitled "Dewey's Opera".
  • Once in a while, in The '70s, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood would invite an opera singer friend of Mr. Rogers named John Reardon, and the episode, entirely set in the Land of Make-Believe and featuring a lofty plot line, would resemble a musical or light opera, with all of the characters singing their lines. One example tells the story of the Wicked Knife and Fork (a man with a giant knife and fork on his tunic) kidnapping Purple Twirling Kitty atop Spoon Mountain, prompting Prince Extraordinary (son of King Kittypuss and Queen Mumsiebelle) and Park Services Director Betty Green to mount a rescue mission. It manages to be quite Troperiffic.
  • Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn: Happens in the dream episode "The Wonderful Wizard of Quads". Lamp shaded as each time there is a song, the characters make it known they know there will be a song coming. Dawn/Dorothy even stops Ricky/Tin Man when he tries to start singing.
  • Northern Exposure: "Old Tree" is like this, but only for Shelly. It's apparently a side effect of her pregnancy. Holling joins her for a duet near the end of the episode.
  • Odd Squad: In "The Cherry-on-Top-inator", Oona is pleased when Olympia and Otis start telling their story about the eponymous device, as she thinks it is going to be a normal story. Instead, it turns out to be a musical about them going undercover in a diner to spy on Puppy Master and Evil Knight.
  • One Day at a Time occasionally did episodes where the cast would perform at a charity gig. The most memorable performance was probably Valerie Bertinelli as Elton John and Mackenzie Phillips as Kiki Dee performing "Don't Go Breaking My Heart."
  • Once Upon a Time has "The Song In Your Heart", the last episode before the two-part Season 6 finale. The episode's flashbacks tell how Snow White and Prince Charming cast a spell that caused the whole Enchanted Forest to keep bursting into song, the joy of this giving them the strength to fight against the Evil Queen. The climax reveals that the magic of that spell still lives in Emma's heart, giving her the power to fight back against the Black Fairy.
  • Oz has one of sorts. Series 5, episode 3 'Variety' has a central theme about variety shows and each of the narrator segments, usually occupied by Hill's musings about the theme is instead one of the characters singing in various different musical styles.
  • Playhouse 90, normally a straight dramatic Genre Anthology, once broadcast a production of The Nutcracker ballet.
  • Power Rangers: Beast Morphers episode 16: The Silva Switch. The song: It's Great to be Human. No kidding. It's absolute hilarity.
  • Psych "The Musical", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The entire episode is a pitch Shawn is giving to a playwright for a musical, so everything's in his Cloud Cuckoolander head.
  • Royal Pains features a musical episode as the penultimate of the series. Turns out to be because it’s from the point of view of the hallucinating patient-of-the-week
  • Sanctuary had a musical episode. The reason they were singing was to communicate with Will's girlfriend, who had been infected with a musical parasite.
    • But that doesn't cover all the singing, such as Magnus's spoken word piece.
  • Schitt's Creek has an episode featuring a community theatre production of Cabaret, with the Show Within a Show providing the framework. Patrick performs "Wilkommen" as the Emcee and Stevie gives a triumphant rendition of "Maybe This Time" as Sally Bowels. An earlier episode featured the rehearsal for "The Money Song" as David and Moira watched Stevie and Patrick's secret rehearsal.
  • Scrubs did a musical episode ("My Musical") with the musicians of Avenue Q, on the premise that a patient had an aneurysm which was making her hear singing when people talked. All the musical sequences were from her point of view, and after she goes into surgery, the music stops.
    • The patient in question is played by Stephanie D'Abruzzo, who was the original Kate Monster in said show.
  • Many episodes of Sesame Street featuring a number of original songs. One notable example is "Music Magic" from 2010, where the story is told mostly through song as a result of a magic spell gone wrong by Elmo.
  • The final episode of season 1 of A Series of Unfortunate Events ends with the Baudelaires, Lemony Snicket, Mr. Poe, and Count Olaf of all people singing a song about how you'd think that life would be good for the Baudelaires, but as the past season has shown, it is not. It's kind of a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.
  • 7th Heaven had a Valentine's Day episode that was also a musical, called Red Socks.
  • The Supernatural episode "Fan Fiction" is an episode about a musical — specifically, a all-girl high school musical based on the Supernatural novels, an in-universe text written about the show's protagonists by an author who turned out to be the next prophet. The songs, sung by teenage girls playing the TV show characters in the musical, include Castiel's "I'll Just Wait Here", Dean's "Manly Tear", and a Broadway-esque rendition of "Carry On, Wayward Son".
  • Switched at Birth had "Dance Me to the End of love". Which had several characters dancing in elaborate imagine spots.
  • That '70s Show's 100th episode was a musical called, quite predictably, That '70s Musical, only instead of singing songs written specially for the show, the characters sang some of the most famous seventies' songs, as well as The Turtles' "Happy Together" from the sixties. The singing scenes take place in Fez's imagination.
  • That's So Raven did one in which Raven lets it slip that the new janitor is a talent scout is visiting her school, and thus everyone is breaking into song to impress the scout. The kids eventually found out he was actually an undercover health inspector.
  • Todd and the Book of Pure Evil has a metal musical episode every season and straddles the line between playing it straight and justifying it. "The Phantom of Crowley High" had one inexplicable love song alongside an actual musical in the school. "2 Girls, 1 Tongue" justifies the singing as a side-effect of one of the Book's spells, but the cast does an unplanned number after the spell ends. Both feature a girl who hates musicals.
  • The Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps episode "When Janet Met Jonny".
  • Xena: Warrior Princess had two, actually. The funny one that parodied the "battle of the bands" type trope, and the (in some ways) more serious "Bitter Suite" episode.
  • X-Play, a video game review show, did a surprisingly not horrible musical episode.
  • In the Legends of Tomorrow episode "Séance & Sensibility", Zari falls for Kamadeva, the Hindu god of love (well, a guy named Sanjay with Kamadeva's powers). They use Kamadeva's powers to turn the prim and proper inhabitants of a Regency England town into backup dancers for their Bollywood musical number. Anyone in the vicinity can't help but sing.
  • Henry Danger has a two-part musical episode called 'Henry Danger the Musical".
  • Teachers (2016) has "Lunchtime! The Musical," which parodies some notable musicals.

    Radio 
  • Episode three of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama Doctor Who and the Pirates. As the story is being told through the framing device of the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn telling the story to one of Evelyn's students, it already contains a bit of storytelling silliness (Evelyn doesn't remember all the pirates' names, so she makes up obviously fake ones for the less-important characters), but when the Doctor takes his turn at telling the story, he decides, for Large Ham reasons, to deliver it in the form of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical. You could say that he's the very model of a Gallifreyan buccaneer.
  • Also in the Big Finish Universe, we have The Scorchies. All together now- Jo is making a thing! It's got lights that flash and go bing! Oh, what a lovely thing to sing about, Jo, making a thing!
  • Season 6, episode 6 of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme has a musical Storyteller sketch about, and caused by, a cursed piano that makes people sing.

    Video Games 

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • 12 oz. Mouse: The episode "Auraphull" featured, among other things, a Rat Pack-esque cover of the theme song, and a fuzzy, low quality VHS recording Live-Action guitar solo.
  • Adventure Time:
    • In "What Was Missing", Finn, Jake, BMO, Princess Bubblegum, and Marceline try to compose a song that will get past a magical gate so they can get back their stuff that was stolen by a Door Lord.
    • In "Food Chain", Magic Man pranks Finn and Jake by sending them on a musical journey through the food chain.
  • The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin: "Octopede Sailors" had more songs than any other episode and could be considered this.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball: The episode "The Singing" features an outbreak of "spontaneous singing" among the citizens of Elmore.
  • American Dad!:
  • In one episode of Animalia a core spore blows and all the animals start singing everything they say.
  • Animaniacs:
  • Arthur:
    • The show did a music video episode in season 3, titled "Arthur's Almost Live Not Real Music Festival": just a revue of musical numbers performed by the cast. The songs are a rap on how awesome libraries are, Brain reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Arthur and D.W. complaining about their dad's awful cooking opera-style, and a doo-wop song about Mr. Ratburn assigning ridiculous amounts of homework.
    • "The Ballad of Buster Baxter", the season 3 premiere, featuring music from Art Garfunkel that told the story of Buster returning to Elwood City after traveling with his father, and the struggles he faced discovering that things had changed there. Garfunkel himself appeared in the episode as a moose actually singing the story; at the end of the episode, everyone realizes that they had no idea where he came from.
      Arthur: MOM, THERE'S A SINGING MOOSE IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE!
    • Downplayed in "Lights, Camera... Opera!" This episode features three opera performances, including a lengthy original track based on Carmen.
  • The Avenger Penguins episode "Rock 'n Roll Penguins" consisted of musical numbers. Even the Badly Drawn Brothers got a song.
  • The Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Mayhem of the Music Meister!" is notable for having somewhat of an in-story justification: the story is about a villain with a hypnotic voice controlling the world through music. Probably the show's most audacious use of Refuge in Audacity.
    • Although that doesn't explain Black Canary (and later, Green Arrow), breaking out into song on their own. Maybe they're just musical theatre fans. "Was the singing really necessary?"
  • Big City Greens
    • The Christmas special "Green Christmas" has songs, which are even lampshaded a few times.
    • "Okay Karaoke" does it in standard 11-minute form, presenting it as a Diegetic Musical.
  • The 2006 revival of Biker Mice from Mars has this happen in the final episode "Turf Wars", including some Villain Songs for the Nomad Rats, Hairball, Dr. Catorkian, and an evil Harley.
  • Bob's Burgers:
    • Deconstructed in "Hamburger Dinner Theater" where Linda naively believes singing can make any situation better, even when they get robbed.
    • Season 7 premiere "Flu-ouise" has the A-plot of Louise having a fever dream that is basically a Whole Plot Reference to The Wizard of Oz, in which several characters in her dream (voiced by her family) sing as well as Louise herself.
    • The Season 8 Christmas Episode "The Bleakening" ups the ante by being an hour-long musical special with seven new songs.
    • The season 9 premiere "Just One of the Boyz 4 Now" has a Running Gag of Tina falling for one of the boys at the auditions, and having an Imagine Spot where he sings her a romantic pop song.
  • The Brak Show: In "Psychoklahoma", Brak and his family put on a musical adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
  • In the CatDog episode "It's a Wonderful Half Life", Cat and Dog have a shared dream depicted as a black-and-white Inkblot Cartoon Style musical.
  • Clone High had "Raisin the Stakes: A Rock Opera in Three Parts", which still contains spoken dialogue in addition to songs.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door did two musical episodes: "F.O.O.D.F.I.T.E." (A heavy metal opera) and "L.O.V.E." (A West Side Story-ish musical).
  • Cow and Chicken has one episode devoted to the school staging Cow's bizarre allegorical musical, "The Ugliest Weenie".
  • Craig of the Creek has "In the Key of the Creek". The episode has Craig stuck inside because of rain, and the songs are him imagining an adventure at the creek.
  • In one episode of Curious George called "Sock Opera Monkey", George does a puppet show of the opera Hansel and Gretel to a recording of the music. In another, "Go West, Young Monkey", although he doesn't sing, several other characters do. (Most of this is a dream sequence.)
  • The 2018 Danger Mouse Christmas Episode, "Melted", has everyone except DM as a fan of a Frozen parody of the same name, and Dawn attempting to recreate it in real life with herself as the heroine.
  • Daria, of all shows, had a musical episode aptly named "Daria!" And yes, Daria sings too—well, more like talking in pitchmsot of the time, but she does sing a few lines - probably because she's just unmotivated, even in a musical. Perfectly in-character.
  • Dexter's Laboratory had its oft-quoted even to this day LABretto episode, which presents itself as an origin story chronicling Dexter's rise from birth to building his secret lab. And it's done as an opera.
  • Eek! The Cat had "Quadrapedia", in which a pair of metal-singing sisters capture Annabelle due to being jealous of her beauty.
    • Another episode involved Dee Dee getting a song stuck in her head, where most of the lines were sung to the tune of it.
  • The Emperor's New School: The Musical speaks for itself, really. Bonus for being a parody of High School Musical.
  • The Evil Con Carne episode "The Pie Who Loved Me" is almost entirely sung.
  • "School's Out: The Musical", an episode of The Fairly Oddparents. The holiday specials also feature musical numbers.
  • Family Guy has done several episodes which are more or less shameless pandering to old-style movie musicals (often focusing primarily on Brian and Stewie and titled "The Road to <Insert Place Here>", which is itself an homage to the Hope/Crosby "Road" movie musicals; one of these, "The Road to Rhode Island", even included a song based on the Road theme itself). A lot of the episodes have one or more musical numbers in them without quite rising to the level of "Musical Episode". And then there's "The King Is Dead", an episode about a musical ("Peter Griffin Presents a Peter Griffin Production of Peter Griffin's The King and I, a Peter Griffin Joint"). It's... not much like the actual musical.
  • Freaky Stories chose to tell the Urban Legend of "the Hook" as a Musical Episode.
  • Futurama:
  • Garfield and Friends: This show did a lot of episodes told entirely through song.
    • "The Garfield Opera" is an opera song about Garfield's eating habits, called a "Serious Cultural Moment" by the Buddy Bears.
    • "The Life and Times of the Lasagna Kid" details the Lasagna Kid (Garfield) saving Mona (Penelope) in a wild-west setting.
    • "The Garfield Rap" is a rap song about various Running Gags, such as kicking Odie off the table and his love of lasagna.
    • "The Picnic Panic" has Garfield, Odie, and Jon dealing with ants that invade their picnic.
    • In "Another Ant Episode", the ants from "The Picnic Panic" return and invade Jon's house.
    • "The Guy of Her Dreams" is about Penelope wishing that her dates with Garfield were more exciting.
    • "The Garfield Musical" has Penelope fall in love with a rock-and-roll cat instead of Garfield.
    • "Truckin' Odie" is a country song about Odie accompanying a trucker on his delivery.
    • "Ode to Odie" is a rap in which Odie meets a mean dog.
    • "The Ocean Blue" has Jon, Odie, and Garfield encountering a shark at the beach.
    • "The Man Who Hated Cats" is a downplayed example, as while not all of it is told in rhyme like the other musicals, there are about five songs in it.
    • The U.S. Acres segments only had one musical episode: "Kiddie Korner", where the characters sing nursery rhymes. However, they keep getting interrupted by Aloysius, who finds unwholesome things in each one.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandys episode "Little Rock of Horrors". It features a very catchy swing-type tune sung by a brain eating alien. Which was sung by Voltaire.
  • Hey Arnold! had "What's Opera, Arnold?," an All Just a Dream rendition of Carmen with the kids from the show.
  • Johnny Bravo:
    • "The Sensitive Male!" has Johnny being subjected to a parody of Schoolhouse Rock! as Jack Sheldon tries to teach him how to be more sensitive towards women.
    • "Traffic Troubles" has Johnny getting sent to "Musical Comedy Traffic School" for jaywalking.
  • Kaeloo: Episode 89. Interestingly, all the characters who are usually Hollywood Tone-Deaf were able to sing well.
  • Kappa Mikey had "The Karaoke Episode", which involved a magic karaoke machine that forced everyone to sing instead of talk.
  • Kim Possible's "Rappin' Drakken" comes close to being a musical episode.
  • The Magic School Bus has "The Family Holiday Special", a Christmas Episode which features several Christmas Carols with lyrics re-worked about the episode's theme of recycling.
  • Looney Tunes
  • The Loud House: The appropriately titled episode "Really Loud Music" is a musical, featuring no less than 14 songs, one of which is sung twice.
  • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack has All Hands on Deck.
  • Metalocalypse has songs in every episode, but season 3's "Rehabklok" was more of a cohesive musical.
  • Miraculous Ladybug has "Santa Claws", which doubles as the Christmas Episode.
  • My Gym Partner's a Monkey has a rather unique variation known as "Animal School Musical". The episode is justified in-universe as the result of a magic wish gone wrong and the characters are literally forced to sing whenever the universe finds it appropriate.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic does regularly feature musical numbers, however some episodes have been full-fledged musical episodes themselves:
    • The season 3 finale "Magical Mystery Cure" manages to cram seven songs into 22 minutes. It's also a Wham Episode that sees Twilight Sparkle becoming an alicorn princess.
    • The season 4 episode "Pinkie Pride" is also a musical episode. With good reason, as "Weird Al" Yankovic guest-stars as rival party planner Cheese Sandwich.
    • The season 5 episode "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" features six songs, among some major Character Development.
    • The season 6 episode "A Hearth's Warming Tail", unlike the above three, does not have a musical guest star and is not a Wham Episode; however, it does fit the Christmas Episode feel.
  • Nature Cat may have songs in some episodes, but there is a full musical episode titled "Onward and Song-ward" in which Daisy has to write a song for the Woodstock Chella Palooza, all while singing along about nature with her friends (and there are four songs in total).
  • The Octonauts is apparently having an upcoming musical special where they must find a way to hold back hungry swarms of coral-eating starfish to save a new friend’s fragile reef home.
  • Over the Garden Wall's fourth episode, "Songs of the Dark Lantern," has the characters arrive at a tavern where the patrons are prone to breaking out in song about everything.
  • The second half of the hour long "Return of Doctor Blowhole" The Penguins of Madagascar special is a musical episode. An incident involving a power cell, a device used to turn people evil and an MP3 player creates a machine that forces everyone to sing in it's field of effect. Cue the villain taking it over and the rest of the cast trying to stop it...all in song!
  • Invoked in the Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero episode "The Princess Most Fair", where the heroes and villains are teleported to a kingdom that magically compels its inhabitants to sing everything they say.
  • Pepper Ann had one. Pepper Ann was auditioning for a musical at school, fell off the stage, and blacked out; when she came to her life was a musical. It turned out to be a dream when she came to for real.
  • Phineas and Ferb has one or more songs per episode, but there's a number of full-fledged examples:
    • "Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together" has four songs, one of which was nominated for an Daytime Emmy award.
    • The Christmas Episode would also qualify.
    • The "Wizard of Odd", a Whole Plot Reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which has the added bonus of having its Musical Episode status lampshaded at every possible opportunity.
    • "Rollercoaster: The Musical" is a full musical episode based off the plot of the first episode, where most of the catchphrases and running gags get their own songs.
  • The Pinky and the Brain episode "Mouse of La Mancha" is, as the title suggests, a Whole Plot Reference to Man of La Mancha, with appropriately altered versions of the title song and "To Dream the Impossible Dream".
  • The Popeye cartoon "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" has almost all the music and words played to the tune of the song.
    • A number of other Popeye shorts (mainly in the Fleischer Studios era) are this as well.
  • As the title indicates, "Garbage Night: The Musical" is the musical episode of Pound Puppies (1980s).
  • Except for a few sentences, the entire episode "See Me Feel Me Gnomey" of The Powerpuff Girls is completely in song. Which in this case makes it a Rock Opera. In fact, the title of the episode is a reference to The Who's Tommy.
  • Ready Jet Go!:
    • "Tiny Blue Dot" is the most famous example. The basic plot is that Jet, Sean, and Sydney are bored on a hot summer day. So Carrot and Celery take them to space to show them why they chose to study Earth in the first place. There are a lot of emphasis put on the songs in this episode.
    • "Lone Star", the Cowboy Episode, is a Western-flavored musical.
    • "Back to Bortron 7", the one-hour special, has a total of eight songs.
    • "Potatoes on Mars", which has four songs and is inspired by retro rock music.
  • Reboot's recap of the third season in the last few minutes of the last episode (of the third season) does this.
  • Rocko's Modern Life had the Earth Day Episode "Zanzibar", which was lampshaded throughout ("How did you all know the words?" "We practiced every Tuesday. Didn't you see the flyers?")
    Chorus: R-E-C-Y-C-L-E recycle!
    C-O-N-S-E-R-V-E conserve!
    Don't you P-O-L-L-U-T-E
    Pollute the rivers, sky, or sea
    Or else you're gonna get what you deserve!
  • Ruby Gloom did an hour-long episode called "Hair(less): The Musical".
  • Rugrats had an episode where the rest of the babies try to teach Dil to appreciate music. To do so, they sing their own renditions (complete with reworked lyrics) of classic songs such as "Bicycle Built For Two," "You Made Me Love You," and "Pack Up Your Troubles."
    • There was also the laundromat-set West Side Story parody "Wash/Dry Story".
  • The direct-to-video film Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire is essentially a musical as the Scooby gang and the feature's incidental characters break out singing throughout.
  • The Simpsons has done numerous musical episodes, usually starring Lisa:
    Disclaimer at the end of the episode: At the insistence of our lawyers, we have no knowledge of a musical based on the life of Eva Peron.
  • South Park has done many musical episodes, too, including The Movie.
    • Perhaps most notably, "Elementary School Musical" in which a new kid appears who is forced by his father to treat the world like a musical. Most of the school joins in.
  • Space Ghost Coast to Coast had "Boatshow".
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Squidbillies: "America: Why I Love Her".
  • Steven Universe has "Mr. Greg", which doubled as a serious Character Development episode where Greg and Pearl finally hash out their feelings about Steven's Missing Mom Rose Quartz (the three of them were in a Love Triangle that Greg won with little effort) and finally becoming friends during a trip to Empire City. There's also "Last One Out of Beach City", which doesn't have the characters sing, but the usual background music is replaced with songs by indie rock musician Mike Krol, as they're going to see his concert.
  • "Bad Rap" from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, where everyone speaks in rhyme throughout.
  • Teen Titans Go! has an episode where they go the opera.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures:
    • The series had two music video episodes. The first was "Tiny Toon Music Television" and the second was "Toon TV". Both episodes have the characters do their covers of classic songs from the '50s, '60s, '70s, and '80s.
    • There's also "Music Day", an episode with three music-themed shorts. In "Ruffled Ruffee", Buster does battle wih a sappy Raffi parody, in "The Horn Blows at Lunchtime", Sneezer causes assumed flatulence in the cafeteria during lunchtime when he practices his trumpet and eats limburger cheese at the same time, and in "Loon Lake", Shirley stars in a play of Swan Lake with the snooty Perfecto Prep swans.
  • Total Drama World Tour is a musical season. Chris would require the contestants to sing during certain challenges, mainly to mess with them.
  • "I Have Heard the Robots Singing" from Transformers: Rescue Bots, the first musical episode in the history of the Transformers franchise.
  • Every episode of Vampirina has a song worth always sixty to seventy seconds, but the most important musical episode with the longest musical number is called "The Vamp-Opera" in which Vee attempts to use a hybrid spell to help with her writer's block, only to accidentally turn the world into a Sung-Through Musical, and she and everyone else have to find a way to break the curse, all while in song.
  • VeggieTales's "Lyle the Kindly Viking" has more songs more frequently than most episodes. At one point Sven (Larry) sings a line that wasn't necessary to do so, and later admits it's a musical while he also sings that line.
  • Wander over Yonder has "My Fair Hatey", an episode in which Wander helps Lord Hater prepare to ask Lord Dominator out on a date, while Commander Peepers teams up with Sylvia to put Dominator out of commission once and for all.
 
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LABretto

In the final scene of the musical episode "LABretto", Dexter sums up his tragic fate.

Origin of Dexte...

"Santa Claws"

Rollercoaster: ...

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LABretto

In the final scene of the musical episode "LABretto", Dexter sums up his tragic fate.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (4 votes)

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Main / MusicalEpisode

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LABretto

Origin of Dexte...

"Santa Claws"

Rollercoaster: ...