The Show Must Go Wrong

When facing these situations, it is best to keep a professional attitude and a calm demeanor.

"But you know, I miss live TV. It's like sex, you know. It's almost better when everything goes horribly wrong."

— Rosemary Howard, 30 Rock

When the characters in a show put on a play, radio show or television show, and everything goes horribly wrong. The Show Must Go On until the management decides the production is truly beyond hope and closes it down. Usually used in comedies, and is sometimes a School Play thanks to lack of experience.

Mishaps may include someone Pushed in Front of the Audience, Special Effect Failure up to and including the set collapsing, an actor Corpsing, or in the worst case Fatal Method Acting. If the cast is quick on their feet, they may be able to Throw It In!. One common payoff is for an important viewer (such as a famous critic or patron) to assume the catastrophe is All Part of the Show and give it a glowing review as a slapstick comedy.

There is an old superstition that this will happen if anybody says the name of Macb— of The Scottish Play inside a theatre.^note With the logical exception of actors saying the lines with the king's name during the show. Do not attempt unless you are willing to deal with many theatre folks who really do consider this Serious Business.

A subtrope of Show Within a Show, Finagle's Law, and Failure Is the Only Option, and an in-universe form of Troubled Production. Also an application of The Law of Conservation of Detail, since let's face it, how boring would it be to watch a show about a show where everything goes smoothly according to plan? The inversion of this is Springtime for Hitler, when people's attempt to make a show fail results in its success. Compare Always a Live Transmission and "We're Live" Realization.

Often overlaps with The Queen Will Be Watching, as having an important person in the audience raises the stakes.

Not to be confused (however much the players want it to be) with The Show Must Go On.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Kamigami no Asobi, the characters (who are gods from various myths, united in a high school) put on a play of Cinderella. Thoth, the teacher, is the narrator... and a drink gets spilled on his script, so he ad-libs - in his own style. Meanwhile, Loki wanted to be the star, but gets the role of the prince's servant, and isn't happy. And then Anubis finds Dionysus' wine...

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In Season 2 episode 7, the Supermen are preparing to perform a play that greatly resembles Swan Lake, but Smart S. slips on a Banana Peel and hurts himself, giving Big M. the idea to sabotage the play on performance night by spilling banana peels on the stage floor.

Comic Books

• De Cape et de Crocs:
  • The heroes are forced to put on a play or die. At first it seems they're going to manage but then some of their friends show up followed by evil mimes and it all goes horribly wrong. The play becomes So Bad, It's Good and everyone is spared.
  • And again later on, after which the Big Bad says "The Show Must Proceed On!"

Films

• The finale of The Muppet Movie is performed while their first attempt at filming goes epically awry.
• The finale of Meet the Feebles does this too; fitting considering it's a Muppets parody.
• In A Night at the Opera, The Marx Brothers throw the opera performance into utter chaos with their hijinks and slapstick attempts to evade the police. Notably, both the stage crew and the police believe The Show Must Go On and try to avoid getting on stage and spoiling the show themselves, even long after it makes any sense for them to worry about interrupting.
• Brain Donors is a loose remake of the Marx Brothers film, substituting ballet for opera. Their intrusion onto Swan Lake is every bit as epic as the climax of the original.
• Lampshaded in Shakespeare in Love. Sure enough everything does go wrong for the first production of Romeo and Juliet, but everything resolves itself for a stunning success.
  Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
  Fennyman: So what do we do?
  Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
  Fennyman: How?
  Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.
• The Spanish movie Hasta la lluvia (Even the Rain) centers around a film crew that decides to make a movie about Christopher Columbus in the land locked country of Bolivia. Had they made it in English, the American studio that was backing them would have given them the money to film on location in the Caribbean, but since they decided on authenticity, they had to look somewhere cheap. The production goes smoothly at first, but as the Cochabumba Water War, a series of protests against the government selling the rights of Bolivia's water to a Multinational, escalate, production ends up shutting down as the as the cast and crew flee the country.
• In Sing, Buster calls a special dress rehearsal of his show as a marketing pitch to a potential sponsor. But it becomes the focal point for a long series of bad decisions, resulting in the destruction of the entire theater. Later, they jury-rig a stage in the ruins to put on the show anyway; Meena gets a little overexcited and brings down part of the stage yet again, but this time she just shrugs and keeps singing.
• Gimme Shelter (1970) documents a real life example that took a tragic turn. The 1969 Altamont Free Concert featuring The Rolling Stones included a last-minute venue change that created a series of logistical disasters and an increasingly unruly audience. To make matters worse, the only security and crowd control was provided by the local Hells Angels who were drunk and belligerent, picking fights with the crowd and escalating the situation. Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin got knocked out in the scuffle, and The Grateful Dead arrived on the scene but immediately noped out, enraging the crowd further. The catastrophe culminated during the Stones’ performance, when an audience member named Meredith Hunter produced a gun and was stabbed to death by the Hells Angels.
• In Doctor in Love, the lecture Sir Lancelot was supposed to attend is interrupted when he - alongside Leonora and Dawn - comes crashing through the projection screen. However, the doctors in attendance find it wildly amusing and give a standing ovation.

Literature

• One of Gordon Korman's books, ''Macdonald Hall Goes Hollywood'', concerns a movie being filmed on a school campus. Bruno, a prankster, interferes with the filming. His attempts to befriend the movie star even get them stranded in the wilderness at one point.
• The Christmas play in Bless Me, Ultima. Two of the kid actors got into a fight, another urinated himself, and in the commotion the baby Jesus was decapitated.
• In Maskerade this is the mantra of the Ankh-Morpork Opera House, holding to it when the lead singer dropped dead just before the first act, when a dragon was perching on the roof, during a civil war, as a mysterious Ghost murders people, and ignoring said Ghost being chased from one box via the chandelier by a cat transformed into a human, showering the audience with glass ornaments. It eventually stops when a hostage situation breaks out on stage, and even then the orchestra continues to provide musical stings.
  • The bledlows of Unseen University also determinedly follow their ancient and utterly meaningless rituals such as the Ceremony of the Keys (a simple exchange of keys added to over time until shouting "Oops! They were in my jacket pocket the whole time! Forget me own head next!" at the top of their lungs is an honored part of the procedure) while ignoring storm, great big things with tentacles, harpies, dragons, and faculty members who scream at them things like "Keep it down! What's the bloody point?".
• The one and only attempt Hogwarts ever made at a School Play, as detailed by Dumbledore in his commentary on The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The two leads had been dating until an hour or so before curtain-call, at which point the boy dumped the girl for one of the other actresses. The resulting disaster led to school plays being banned rather than just dropped.

Live-Action TV

• Frasier:
  • Used in the Mystery Theater episode. Frasier is directing a play for his radio show, and no one cooperates. Roz can't speak properly because she has a jaw full of Novocaine, Bulldog gets stage fright and can't talk, Gil is furious that his dying monologue is cut and tries to do it anyway, and Niles gets fed up with Frasier's Prima Donna Director antics and "shoots" all of the characters (with the sound effects).
  • In another episode Frasier is due to perform a solo as part of a PBS fundraiser. As the telethon is airing on February 29th he decides to "Take a Leap" and perform a challenging aria from Rigoletto instead of his traditional "Buttons & Bows" from Paleface. He gets cold feet at the last second and decides to go back to "Buttons & Bows"...but the lack of rehearsal means he's forgotten most of the lyrics. He ends up flailing through the live performance and desperately scrambling for words to fill the gaps in the lyrics.
• Subverted in Seinfeld when Jerry and George film the pilot for their show. It looks like they're struggling and it's going absolutely nowhere, but they successfully make a pilot. The show doesn't get picked up, but not because of any problem with the show itself; it gets canceled because their main supporter, the president of the network, becomes lovesick for Elaine and runs off to join Greenpeace.
• This trope must be the motto of The Muppets. No matter what kind of chaos is going on backstage, the Muppets always keep the show going until the very end.
• Perfect Strangers' seventh season episode “The Play’s the Thing.” Larry writes a play loosely based on the adverse experiences of his youth entitled “Wheat,” which is set to be performed at the local community theater. A few days before opening night, Larry insults the director and everyone in the cast and crew quits, forcing Larry, Balki, Jennifer, Mary Anne and Lydia to perform all of the parts themselves. Hilarity Ensues as each of them forgets their lines, misses their entrances and exits, comes out with the wrong props, and breaks character. Balki, who is playing angry brother Billy, goes into a mad rage after Larry’s lesson in Method Acting goes horribly right, and ends up destroying much of the set in the process. The performance ends with Balki throwing Larry off the stage.
• In Modern Family, when Cam directs the school play, only one thing really goes badly wrong: the crane that's supposed to lift and lower Luke gets stuck with him at the top. Unfortunately, the premise is that Luke is flying around the world and landing in various places, and most scenes presuppose his return to the ground.
• Slings & Arrows' third-season production of King Lear is like this. It ends with the lead actor dying and everyone else involved in the production being fired.
• In the Made in Canada episode "Beaver Creek Live", the Show Within a Show Beaver Creek does a Live Episode to celebrate reaching 150 episodes; however, since they have only a few days to prepare the episode from scratch using a previously rejected script, the production is a disaster. A crew member can be clearly seen through a window of the studio set; a door opens for one character but then gets stuck for another, who has to climb in through a window; one of the performers freezes up completely, while another forgets his lines (and the teleprompter on the camera to which he is to deliver them isn't working) and another begins ad libbing out of spite; and finally, a protester against violence on television invades the set and is punched out by the lead actress. The network quickly cuts transmission and starts airing a segment about beaver from the PSA series Hinterland Who's Who.
• The closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London faked this for fun during the "Symphony of British Music" stretch: A Human Cannonball act proving a dud turned out to be the setup for Eric Idle performing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", complete with a new verse about how The Show Must Go On. And the hijinks didn't stop there — midway through the number he had to deal with an intrusion by Bollywood-style dancers!
• An episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide has the school hosting a production of Romeo and Juliet, with Spender and Suzie playing the title roles. Ned and Cookie try to get Spencer out of the way so he can't kiss Suzie during the balcony scene, but stage manager Mose, assigned to make sure that "the show must go on", foils their every attempt. Eventually, Spencer is injured, and Ned gets to be the one to kiss Juliet... but unfortunately, Suzie is also injured, and Cookie has to play Juliet.
• Get Krack!n: In-Universe the show is primarily staffed by interns and is broadcast live at 2 a.m., which causes every episode to lurch from one dramatic mishap to the next.
• The Lester Guy Show is an in-universe example from On The Air. It's not a Lester Guy Show episode without head trauma!
• The Designing Women episode "Mamed" sees the ladies performing in a community theater production of Mame. Julia as Mame repeatedly clashes with her boozey former Broadway baby co-star culminating in the woman showing up late for opening night and too drunk to perform. All seems hopeless until Anthony dons her costume and takes to the stage as Vera Charles.
• Gilligan's Island: In "Angel on the Island", in addition to the drama surrounding Ginger and Mrs. Howell vying for the lead role, the play has to deal with the Skipper constantly flubbing his lines and Gilligan breaking the ladder the Professor is using to paint the set. When Mrs. Howell apparently loses her voice, Mr. Howell considers it the last straw...until Gilligan suggests that he could have Ginger take over as Cleopatra again. Even during the play itself, there are some problems like Gilligan accidentally ripping off the Skipper's costume.
• Victorious: Being a show set in a performing arts school, many episodes deal with the main characters putting on plays. Most of the time, these go wrong. Some notable examples include:
  • In one episode, Tori tries to help Cat in a class about applying monster make-up to actors. This results in Tori getting make-up put on her face that makes her look like a zombie. However, Cat isn't able to get the make-up off before Tori has to perform in a play, forcing her to perform while looking like a zombie. Tori is able to get the make-up off partway through the play and the audience assumes the make-up was symbolic of inner beauty.
  • In another episode, Tori has to give blood before a play where she's starring as the lead. Jade, her understudy, sabotages the blood donation so that Tori can't perform and she can get the part. In the end, Tori is so weak from the blood donation that she collapses on stage.
  • While performing a stunt for a play, Trina's harness malfunctions and she's sent flying across the stage. As a result, she's hospitalized.
• High School Musical: The Musical: The Series has a notoriously bad time with the play in the first season.
  • Miss Jenn accidentally starts a fire backstage, forcing production to move to a dilapidated theatre...which then moves back to the school (in the gymnasium) after Kourtney's attempt at a mic test blows out the sound system. The only person available to run the sound system there is Big Red, who basically joined the tech team by accident, and repeatedly hits the wrong sound queues in the first act.
  • Kourtney then gets forced to sub in for Gina after the latter has to move away at the last minute, only to return partway though the first act and get the part foisted back onto her (though at least both girls are happy about this development).
  • Just before the act break, Ricky sees his mom in the audience with her new boyfriend and has a Heroic BSoD. This coupled with finding out that there's a talent scout in the audience for Nini makes him panic and drop out of the part, causing E.J. to get bumped to the role of Troy and Carlos into Chad.]]
  • Nini is so focused on said talent scout that she doesn't see Ricky's text regarding the situation, and is caught off-guard by E.J. showing up in Troy's role...who then goes off script, declares that he's not the person she should be performing with, and leaves. Nini has to pull Ricky from the audience and force him back into the role.
  • The second season performance of Beauty and the Beast is much less hectic, though the characters stress this is because they're highly wary due to the events of last semester.
  Carlos: Second acts aren't exactly our strong suit.
  Miss Jenn: I think I was playing Troy at some point...
  • Still, just before the climactic transformation scene, Ricky's harness goes missing (actually stolen by rival drama student Lily). Miss Jenn, who's been growing slowly more unhinged over the course of the night, screams at Ricky to "jump off something high", and even after she calms down the cast and crew have to improvise something. We don't see the results, but apparently they were "passable".
• LazyTown: In "Defeeted", the "sportacular spectacle" turns out to be anything but once Sportacus goes out of control.
• The unauthorized theatrical production of The Phantom of the Opera taking place in an episode of Married... with Children ends up an Epic Fail because of snags happening before and during production: It begins with Gary knocking Larry, who's supposed to be in the production with Kelly, out due to the grudge Gary harbors over losing money in one of Larry's failed business schemes, resulting in Al having to substitute for Larry at the last minute. Then, due to the last-minute nature of Al's substitution, he puts on the tuxedo without taking off his werewolf costume that he's wearing for a failed business promotion gimmick, so the tux barely holds up. In addition, he doesn't know the lines he's supposed to say on stage, so he's reduced to reading off notes he has with him. Then more troubles ensue on stage (Al is no good with playing an organ — or, rather, a synthesizer, in this scenario — beyond the "Charge" fanfare from baseball games, he and Kelly are both bad at acting, the tux that barely stays on rips apart as he tries to leave the stage, and he triggers the alarm for trying to escape via the front door, prompting the audience to leave the theater via Air-Vent Passageway), ensuring the whole show ends in total disaster.

Music

• Pink Floyd's The Wall, more specifically "In the Flesh." It's more visible in the 1980-81 tours: before this song, the "MC: Atmos" prologue that kicked off the show was done a second time, but the MC looked and acted like a zombie the second time around (a consequence of the wall's completion). Also, the vocalist has suffered a fugue state, and isn't singing the words that he probably should be singing within the context of the show/album.
• Folk group the Limeliters got their audience to participate in filling in the verses to "Hey Li-Lee-Li-Lee," resulting in one member contributing this (followed by Glenn Yarborough's response):
  Audience member: Let the audience sing, not me,
  Audience: Hey li-lee-li-lee-lo,
  Audience member: I know when I'm off key!
  Audience: Hey li-lee-li-lee-lo!
  
  Yarborough: I don't know if you knew it, feller,
  Audience: Hey li-lee-li-lee-lo,
  Yarborough: You just spoiled a billion-seller!
  Audience: Hey li-lee-li-lee-lo!
  

Music Videos

• Christine McVie's video for "Love Will Show Us How".

Radio

• Radio Active made mishap-prone live radio something of a staple of its episodes. For example, in the 1983 episode "A Probe Round the Back", a spoof of "behind the scenes" documentaries, presenter Anna Daptor (Helen Atkinson-Wood) interviews technician Eric Alcock (Michael Fenton Stevens) about the jingles he will be playing live for the upcoming show with Mike Channel (Angus Deayton). Then the show begins:
  [a jazzy tune plays in the background]
  Mike Channel: Hello, it's a sunny Monday here on Radio Active, and my name is ("Tra-ffic NEWS!") ... er, Mike Channel, traffic news will of course be coming up later in the show, but ("Tra-ffic NEWS!") straight off today here's our first record... [Beat] ("Tra-ffic NEWS!") ... er, yes indeed, er, Radio Active, er, here, and I'm Mike Channel, er, w-which of course brings you the best sounds around, and ("Tra-ffic NEWS!") and of course, good old, er, traffic news. But, er, straight off today, here is our first record- ("Mike Chan-nel!") Er, Mike Channel here, and- ("Mike Flex!") er, Mike Flex will be here later on, but now- ("Mike Stand!") er, Mike Stand was on earlier, but now- ("Si-mon BATES!") ... Simon Bates is on Radio 1, but right now, here on the Mike Channel Show here on Radio Active, we have today's first record, that great hit of the Seventies, it's ("Commercial time!")

Theatre

• Noises Off: It's both playing this trope straight and subverting it.
• Mame: Vera Charles invites Mame to be in her "terribly modern operetta" about a lady astronomer as the singing moon-lady. Unfortunately, Mame enters at the wrong time and then falls off the moon, ruining the whole show. The exact details vary between productions, but it's bad enough that Mame gets fired right after the curtain call.
• "Pyramus and Thisbe" is sometimes played this way in productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, though it's already pretty awful.
• The second act of Gypsy opens with Louise in "Mme. Rose's Toreadorables," a tacky pastiche of June's turns that degenerates into a parade of flubs. Fortunately, it's only a rehearsal.
• Occurs twice in The Phantom of the Opera, first at the end of Act I when the Phantom turns Carlotta's voice into a frog's, strangles Joseph Buquet with a rope and throws him off the rafters for all to see, ending with the famous chandelier incident. At the end of Act II, Christine reveals the Phantom's face in front of the entire audience and chaos ensues.
• The Play That Goes Wrong is built entirely around this; according to what we hear about the in-universe group, their shows are generally absolute catastrophes. Bad "Bad Acting", mislaid props, miscued sound effects and actors coming on too early are only the start of it.
  • Peter Pan Goes Wrong: One of the Lost Boys starts the show in a wheelchair, three different actors take on the role of Peter as their predecessor suffers an Amusing Injury too many, and Tinkerbell gets electrocuted by her own costume.
• Everything ever attempted by the Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society.

Theme Parks

• This is a popular premise for attractions at the Disney Theme Parks:
  • Muppet*Vision 3D has Kermit and co. attempting to demonstrate their new titular technology through a series of colorful setpieces. By the end, the show has gone so wrong that the theater itself is partially destroyed.
  • Honey, I Shrunk the Audience takes place at an award ceremony for Wayne Szalinski that also features demonstrations of some of his new and/or improved inventions. Before long, 999 mice are running loose in the audience, there's Stuff Blowing Up, and then the event that cues the Title Drop takes things From Bad to Worse.
  • It's Tough to Be a Bug!: Flik tries to stage a talent show featuring such questionable critters as an acid-spitting termite and a stinkbug, and then Hopper crashes the show to turn the tables on the "honorary bugs" — aka humans — in the audience as revenge for how they've treated bugs all these years.

Video Games

• The film production in a Fate/Grand Order after Murasaki becomes comatose is a trainwreck barely held together by the protagonist with input from Chaldea as the actors' egos get out of control and try to inflate their importance in the story, since the script is very incomplete and has no notes to consult as to how the plot will develop. Then the actor, "Salazar", regains his memories, promptly dies, and the protagonist has to somehow create a natural narrative contrivance to explain his absence. And to top it all off, they're on an incredibly tense time limit of only having a few days to actually wrap anything up, otherwise they haven't resolved the film director ghost's wish to finish a movie and retrieve the Holy Grail they're hunting for.
• Final Fantasy VI has the epic Opera House scene in Jidoor, where your party goes to rendezvous with the owner of the world’s only airship by … impersonating his girlfriend, a trained opera singer. You can choose to mess up the performance by muffing the song, which gets you derisive laughter from the audience and a mighty scolding from the Impresario. (If you do it too many times, you will eventually get a Non-Standard Game Over.) Oddly enough, if you complete the aria correctly, the opera is still ruined after the subsequent boss battle leaves both of the lead actors unconscious and the lead actress is duly abducted.
• Final Fantasy VII has one section where Cloud and one of his friends have a date and are put into a play. You can mess it up totally and get away with it.
• The plays put on by the Stars of Destiny in Suikoden III can be played straight... but it's much more entertaining to, say, cast Romeo and Juliet with not-so-talented actors. Or ninjas. Or ducks. Or an all-dog cast. Then there's the performances of William Tell: guess what can happen when those go awry.

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends: In "Class Act", the characters put on a Christmas play, but it all goes horribly wrong when Nutty mistakes Sniffles' candy cane costume for an actual candy cane and takes a bite out of him, setting into motion a series of Disaster Dominoes that end with a fire breaking out and most of the characters being injured in one way or another.
• Homestar Runner has done this in "A Decemberween Pageant" and probably a number of other times.
  Homestar: [while onstage] Wow. I can't believe the night of the big Decemberween pageant has finally arrived! After all the weeks and weeks of rehearsing and practicing and memorizing lines...
  Marzipan: Homestar, I don't think those are your lines.
• RWBY Chibi, Team RWBY puts on a play of Little Red Riding Hood. However, Yang keeps upstaging everyone, Blake loathes having been type-cast as the Big Bad Wolf just because she's a faunus and Weiss can't see the point of being the huntsman given that Ruby has written her gun-scythe into the play. When the team realise that Ruby has based the lead role off herself, the play comes to a crashing halt. At that point, their long-suffering narrator finally twigs that the kids are truanting from class, forcing the team to abandon the play and flee.
  Weiss: Who wrote this stupid story anyway?
  Ruby: I did! Thank you very much!
  Yang: Ugh! No wonder. Red Riding Hood's a total Mary Sue character ... "Loved by many and known for her hood"?! You totally based her off yourself!
  Ruby: GRRRRRRRRRR! I like to think that art is open to interpretation.
  Professor Ozpin: Wait a minute. Aren't you kids all supposed to be in class?
  Ruby: CHEESE IT!!
• One Camp Camp episode centered around Preston trying to put on a play of his own creation (a Fan Sequel to Romeo and Juliet involving cyborgs and black magic...yes, really). The play isn't doing well in the first place, but it only gets worse when Max uses David's Tinder account to go catfishing and Neil's Stalker with a Crush arrives to take the role of Juliet by force.

Webcomics

• Leif & Thorn: The performance of Leachtric. At first the plumbing problems interfere with the on-stage special effects, then they force the entire building to get evacuated before the second act.

Western Animation

• In Chowder, the main cast (minus Endive) put on a play, and it is nearly completely ruined by Chowder when he takes his role too seriously. And then it gets really weird
• In It's Christmas Time Again Charlie Brown, the school Christmas play goes wrong when Peppermint Patty, playing a sheep, first drowns out Franklin with her baa-ing, and then forgets what sound sheep make ("Meow! Woof! Moo! Whatever."). And it goes bad again when Sally screws up her one line, saying "hockey stick" instead of "hark".
• In King of the Hill, Hank tries to make a video to impress the Dallas Cowboys, but his friends and family are so stupid that they mess everything up.
• A number of Warner Bros. cartoons have a show gone hilariously wrong. In "Show Biz Bugs," Bugs can seemingly do no wrong while everything Daffy does is a full-fledged FEMA candidate. Bugs puts Elmer on the spot in "Stage Door Cartoon," and it happens to Bugs himself in "Rhapsody Rabbit" and "Baton Bunny."
  • The 2012 CGI short, "Daffy's Rhapsody", centers around Daffy trying to perform a play called Requiem for a Hunt (based on a song Mel Blanc recorded in-character in the early '50s), while being chased by Elmer Fudd.
• The bumpers for Rocky and Bullwinkle have Bullwinkle trying to pull a rabbit out of his hat, and failing each time (though the closest he comes is when he pulls Rocky out).
• In universe, every episode of The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show is a live show hosted by Mr. Peabody and Sherman. Needless to say, no episode goes as Mr. Peabody planned it. Disruptions had ranged from nosy neighbors (the show is filmed from their apartment building), a malfunctioning elevator, a black hole, an overzealous fan, and a viral outbreak leading to a government quarantine.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "The Show Stoppers": The Cutie Mark Crusaders' musical performance goes horribly wrong since every task is placed in the hooves of the one least suited for it - the singer (Scootaloo) can't sing, the dancer (Applebloom) can't dance, and the backdrops and special effects are done by somepony who should not operate a hammer (Sweetie Belle). The irony that everypony except them can see is that they'd have done a great job if they just shifted those tasks around a bit...
• In an episode of The Simpsons Mr. Burns makes an industrial film to promote working at the plant. We see how terrible it is and assume we're watching the filming process; but no, it's the final product.
• Classic Disney Shorts
  • In "The Band Concert", Mickey conducts his friends in performing from the "William Tell Overture" which gets interrupted by such things as Donald playing "Turkey in the Straw" on a fife, a bee interrupting Mickey's conducting, and a tornado scaring away the audience and picking up the entire band.
  • In "Symphony Hour", Mickey and friends perform Franz von Suppe's "Light Calvary Overture" on a radio program... after Goofy accidentally drops all their instruments down an elevator shaft. Donald tries to bail at one point, only staying because Mickey stops him at gun point.
• Kaeloo: In Episode 67, the characters (apart from Olaf, Olga and Serguei) put on a ballet performance for Olga's birthday. A chain reaction takes place which destroys all the props and injures the cast members.
• The Flintstones: "Curtain Call at Bedrock" has Wilma staging a local production of Romeo & Juliet with Fred, Barney and Betty playing parts. Things go wrong when Wilma loses her voice and Barney gets the mumps, from which he soon recovers. The cast is left to wing it, and what results is a theater full of patrons laughing their heads off. The critics in the next morning's newsslate praised it as "a smash comedy."
• The Hair Bear Bunch: In "(Whatever Happened to) Goldilocks and the Three Bears," a filming of the fairy tale is being shot on location at Wonderland Zoo. It degenerates into a food fight with everyone throwing bowls of porridge at each other.
• Beetlejuice: "Stage Fright" has Claire Brewster getting Lydia kicked off the cast of a school play of "Romeo & Juliet," so Beetlejuice gets even by taking over Claire's body and disrupting the play.

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