Out Of Order / Western Animation

• 101 Dalmatians: The Series had a very notorious case of this, due to the show having two episode packages- one for syndication on weekday afternoons (which premiered on September 1, 1997) and one for Saturday mornings on ABC (which premiered September 13), thus causing the episode order to get screwed up. While "Home Is Where the Bark Is" is the first episode chronologically (and was the first to premiere on ABC), "You Slipped a Disk/Chow About That?" was aired first in syndication. Other errors with the order include:
  • "Lucky All-Star" aired before any other episode with Lucky and Tripod's rivalry, which was especially egregious because that particular episode had them end their rivalry.
  • "Love 'Em and Flea 'Em" was to be the episode where Two-Tone leaves Mooch and his gang and loses her crush on him, but a number of episodes (such as "Bad to the Bone" and some implications in "Twelve Angry Pups") show that she's still in the gang, along with episodes that show Mooch with only Whizzer and Dipstick in his gang.
  • "Purred It Through the Grapevine" aired before "It's a Swamp Thing", which was to introduce the swamp setting and its characters before they appeared in the former episode.
  • "Two for the Show" aired before "Best of Show", which caused a major continuity error- in "Best of Show", Cruella gets a dog, Vandella, who competes in a dog show against the main pups and Spot. She re-appears in "Two for the Show", but the episode aired months before "Best of Show" (her final episode "My Fair Moochie" aired after "Best of Show", thus not causing any continuity errors).

• The The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius special "The League of Villains" featured villains Baby Eddie and Grandma Taters. This aired before "Clash of the Cousins" and "One of Us", which were supposed to be the introductory episodes for the two.

• Nick held back a season 1 episode of All Grown Up!, which sees Angelica celebrate her 13th birthday, until August 2004... which was also 13 years to the month that the predecessor series debuted. It was held back so long, a few episodes of the following season had already debuted a few months before, with a rather noticeable Art Evolution between seasons.
  • Due to Lucky 13 not airing, Saving Cynthia, the second episode of season 2, couldn't be aired either until October 2, as it took place after Angelica's 13th birthday. As a result, the episode was skipped during season 2's premiere in June 2004.
• Alma's Way has a Halloween Episode as its' 38th episode. In order for the episode to air in time for the 2022 Halloween season without holding it over for season 2, it was the 27th aired.
• American Dragon: Jake Long:
  • Disney waited several months to air "Halloween Bash" to time it near Halloween. The trouble was that a character who was imprisoned in a previously aired (but produced later) episode showed up, making it seem like said character had escaped prison without anyone bringing it up.
  • The fifth episode ("Act 4, Scene 15") has Jake confide magical information to Spud and Trixie, who take it completely in stride. They would not learn about the magical world, or Jake's role in it, for two more episodes, in "Professor Rotwood's Thesis". Then, four episodes after they learned ("Shapeshifter"), Jake is being coy about his dragon business, and Spud and Trixie are completely oblivious. Also the events "Shapeshifter" are briefly mentioned in "Dragon Summit", two episodes prior. Though both cases are subtle, these small scenes imply that "Act 4, Scene 15" and "Shapeshifter" were swapped in airing.
  • Disney aired the episode "Switcheroo" a month before they aired "The Love Cruise", despite "Switcheroo" spoiling the Downer Ending of "The Love Cruise".
• Animaniacs apparently had this issue when its very long first season (69 episodes, out of a total of 99 for the entire series) was aired on Fox Kids: The first appearance of Katie Ka-Boom was in a crossover with Chicken Boo, and the Minerva Mink cartoon titled "Meet Minerva" is her third appearance — the first being a cartoon in which she appears as a suspect in a Hercule Poirot spoof and the second being her only other solo cartoon. Worse yet, the DVD releases retain the air date order, which led to "Meet Minerva" being on the third volume out of a total of four.
• Arthur: The specials encountered an issue with this. The Rhythm and Roots of Arthur, which premiered in January 2020, contains some minor bits of continuity with An Arthur Thanksgiving, which aired in November later that year despite being produced first. For instance, Thanksgiving contains a plot about D.W.'s Aunt Minnie visiting, whom she distrusts because she's never met her before. However, she does come around to appreciating her. In Rhythm and Roots, when D.W. tries to leave the family reunion early, Aunt Minnie is the one who convinces her to come back, which makes less sense without seeing Thanksgiving first. Similarly, D.W.'s neighbor Bud has moved away in Rhythm and Roots, but he has a decent role in Thanksgiving, where he still lives in Elwood City.
• Justified for As Told by Ginger when Kathleen Freeman died. Freeman played a teacher, and an episode had one of her students trying to convince her to continue teaching after she'd quit in disgust. Originally, she was supposed to come back to work, but her death forced a rewrite... and the last episode she'd worked on (originally the next after this one) to be shuffled to before.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes episode "Widow's Sting" reportedly takes place after a three-part storyline in which the Avengers stop Kang the Conqueror from taking over 21st century Earth. However, Disney XD aired it before the Avengers even met Kang. Producer Josh Fine says the episode mostly works well in either position, but also that "one minor character point" in the episode "Hail HYDRA!" makes more sense in the chronological order. "Widow's Sting" ends with Nick Fury learning about the Skrulls' invasion, and "Hail HYDRA!" contains a few acknowledgments of his disappearance. Having Kang's invasion come in between those two episodes creates the impression that Fury put off preparing for the arrival of additional Skrulls. Another point that might deserve mentioning involves the part where Kang says that a disaster during the Kree-Skrull war will destroy the entire world. Iron Man then brings up the fact the Avengers already met the Kree, and know of their imminent arrival. If Disney XD aired these episodes in chronological order, this arc would have come right after the Avengers met Captain Mar-Vell.
• Batman: The Animated Series: The broadcast order is completely different than the production order the DVD uses and standalone episodes would often air in the middle of two-parters
• Ben 10: Omniverse, as several episodes have aired showing new things or aliens Ben doesn't have yet. For example "Store 23", aired as the season 2 finale, showed Ben with Feedback despite Ben not regaining him until "Showdown", which aired as the third season premiere. That episode also introduced his new Tenn-Speed motorcycle, which Word of God says he doesn't get until "Rules of Engagement", which doesn't air until near the end of the season.
• Big City Greens:
  • The first episode, "Welcome Home", somehow got aired as the eighth, and "Space Chicken" took its place. Note that the latter was produced back in 2014 as a pilot (when the show was known as Country Club), and creates an awkward start to the main characters.
  • "Virtually Christmas" was intended to air in 2021, but the 3D animation wasn't ready then. By the episode's 2022 airdate, episodes had aired in which the Greens moved back to their country home, while "Virtually Christmas" had the Greens still living in Gramma's Big City house.
• In the United Kingdom airing of Big Hero 6: The Series, the order of "Fred's Bro-Tillion" and "Issue 188" was reversed. Also, "Steamer's Revenge", in which the team salvages Wasabi's car from the bay and upgrades it for his birthday, appears to take place before "Big Hero 7", which features Wasabi's car, salvaged and souped up with no explanation, despite airing two episodes after it.
• Bob's Burgers: The Season 6 episode "Gayle Makin' Bob Sled", where aunt Gayle says that she recently stopped dating Mr. Frond (only to get back with him at the end due to a misunderstanding), is aired before "The Cook, The Steve, The Gayle, & Her Lover", where she reveals to the family that Mr. Frond is her new date.
• Season 4 of The Boondocks had an arc where Granddad tries to get out of debt. Looking at how the episodes were aired, it looks like the arc was never resolved because of the last episode, but looking at the production orders, the arc makes a bit more sense. The arc is actually resolved in the fourth episode where Granddad gets a girlfriend who ends up paying off his debt anyway, but the ending ultimately becomes a Status Quo Is God ending.
  • Russian channel 2x2 premiered first two seasons going by production order. Which shouldn't have been a problem, but when time came for The Story of Gangstalicious, they accidentally showed Part 2 from the second season, the one that starts with "Last season on The Boondocks" introduction and heavily references Part 1's events and aftermath. They had to scramble and show Part 1 in place of second season's Part 2, which is, if you use the production order, last episode of season 2. Whoops.
• With The Brave Little Toaster sequels, To the Rescue was produced in 1997, and Goes to Mars in 1998; To the Rescue was, indeed, released in 1997... in all but North America, for whatever reason, where its release was delayed for two years. Goes to Mars was still released everywhere, including North America, in 1998. This, understandably, results in confusion among people as to the timeline of the trilogy, as to why the events of what seemed like the third installment took place before the events of what was assumed to be the second installment.
• Bunsen Is a Beast:
  • The episode "Bunsen is a Beast!" premiered as the first segment of episode two, but is clearly intended to be where the series begins due to the episode establishing Bunsen's first day of school as well as his first meetings with Mikey and Amanda.
  • "The Boy Who Cried Wolfie" is intended to be the introductory episode of Bunsen's friend Wolfie, but didn't air until after "Beast Halloween Ever", where Wolfie makes a brief appearance and is regarded as if he was an already established friend of Bunsen and Mikey's.
• One of the biggest issues in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is episodes airing out of chronological order. "Wirewolf" and "Revenge of the Monsters" are the most important examples of such a continuity issue. "Wirewolf" is set in Season 2 but clearly precedes "Revenge of the Monsters" which is set in Season 1. To add to the confusion, when the series first aired, Season 1 and Season 2 were aired almost at the same time, but on different channels and time slots. Hence, chronologically speaking, "Wirewolf" did precede "Revenge of the Monsters" when they first aired on October 28 and November 14 of 2000 respectively, but since then "Wirewolf" has always been aired several episodes afterwards on reruns, in accordance to their Season 1 and Season 2 slots.
  • Another example of continuity error comes with the episodes "XL" and "The Planet Destroyer". In the latter episode, Mira's father teaches her how to "sift" through someone's brain for information, but "XL" aired before it with Mira already having known the ability. Production-wise "XL" follows right after "The Planet Destroyer", but broadcast-wise they are separated by a few episodes with the former airing first.
• Almost the entirety of the first season of ChalkZone was aired out of order. This wasn't too big of an issue, though episode 6 ("The Skrawl/Pie Day/Secret Passages"), which was to close up the season, aired as episode 3, which caused a bit of confusion as references to previous episodes were shown in "The Skrawl". Episode 2 ("Snapmobile/Rudy's Date/Future Zone"), which included the Oh Yeah! Cartoons short where Penny fist visits ChalkZone, aired as episode 4. Episode 4 ("French Fry Falls/Gift Adrift"), which aired as episode 2, had Penny already knowing about ChalkZone enough to have had been there a few times (it should be noted that the fourth episode was one of the first produced, hence why it may have aired earlier). Later seasons don't do this, though the second-to-last episode of season three ("Purple Haze/No Place Like Home/Disaster Park") ended up airing as the first episode of the fourth season (made even more obvious when the art style was updated in season four)- most likely due to Nickelodeon wanting to air the season finale "When Santas Collide" first in time for Christmas. The season three episode "Indecent Exposure/My Big Fat Chalk Wedding/Rap-A-Present" was supposed to air as the eighth episode of the season, but ended up switching places with "Mother Tongue/Going Eyeballistic/The Ballad of Toe Fu" (presumably by accident). The last episode of season four ("The Quicksand Man/Vampire Cannibals of New York/Killer Breath"- also the final episode of the series) ended up airing as the sixth episode of the season (the mix-up may have also been caused by the episode being the first to air in the early morning timeslot in 2008, where all the remaining episodes of season four were burned off after the show was officially canceled in 2005). All the episodes are in order on Amazon Instant Video (though broken up into volumes rather than seasons) and on the complete series DVD (except for "The Quicksand Man/Vampire Cannibals of New York/Killer Breath", which was in the order it was broadcast).
• Clerks: The Animated Series suffered terribly from this. Episode 4 - the courtroom episode - was shown first, instead of the premiere episode that the network mandated be done in the first place. (On the DVD commentaries, the staff admits they weren't too thrilled with Episode 1 and had some say in the decision, though.) But the really boneheaded decision was to air Episode 2 next, as it was a Clip Show where the intended Running Gag was that there was only one episode to flash back to. Except instead of being funny, this only confused TV viewers as it kept flashing back to Episode 1 which had never aired.
• Code Lyoko is kind of an odd case. While the first season was broadcast in order, on the DVD list, the episodes—aside from the last two—are wildly out of order. Compounding things is that the episode numbers are in the title cards of each episode. Sure, it's C:L's first season, but still…
• Danger Mouse:
  • When Nickelodeon aired Danger Mouse, there were two episodes dealing with a time-traveling grandfather clock. The first was "The Hickory Dickory Dock Dilemma" (which had DM and Penfold sent through different periods of time); the second was "The Clock Strikes Back" (a megalomaniacal magician uses it to come to present day London). Nickelodeon aired "The Clock Strikes Back" before "The Hickory Dickory Dock Dilemma."
  • Also, Nickelodeon ran the serialized stories (series 2 through 4) initially when the series started on the network, and then ten-minute episodes starting with a series 1 episode followed by a series five or six episode. Once the season 1 eps were run, the two episodes comprising a show were from series five and/or six. The serial "Demons Aren't Dull" used scenes from the first series (as part of a subplot in which DM is being humiliated on a testimonial show) and, as noted, was shown before the episodes from where the scenes came.
  • The original BBC broadcasts of the 2016 relaunch somehow manage to feature the return of Isembard Kingkong Brunel in "Big Penfold" before he gets introduced in "The Inventor Preventer". Since the latter episode spent a lot of time building up the idea he was a gorilla, before revealing a tiny chimp, the fact the audience already knew he was a tiny chimp was problematic.
• Nickelodeon did this several times with Danny Phantom, with a few instances resulting in plenty of confusion:
  • "The Ultimate Enemy" was aired prior to "The Fenton Menace", despite it being clear by events in the episodes that "The Fenton Menace" had to have occurred first.
  • The sixth episode of the third season was aired as the season premiere, leading to viewers being greatly confused by things such as the fact that villain Vlad Masters was now the mayor of the town. The episode that actually explains how that happened (the intended season premiere) would end up being the seventh episode to air, ten months later.
• The production order of Daria places the slightly-existential "Through a Lens Darkly" as the season three premiere. However, MTV decided to kick things off with the Musical Episode instead. Later, the DVD arranged the third season episodes so that the musical would take up the seventh spot, and "Through a Lens Darkly" could designate the start of the season.
• Dave the Barbarian had blatant signs that the network deviated from the production order:
  • The heroes meet Chuckles for the first time in the 13th broadcast episode, "The Way of the Dave", but they also face him in at least three of the episodes that came before it. A number of other scenes also betray the fact "The Way of the Dave" was probably supposed to begin the show.
  • The 20th episode broadcast introduces Quozmir, who Dave already interacted with in the second episode Disney Channel showed.
• Applies to pretty much every pre-Static Shock DC Animated Universe show. Episodes are out of order by both air dates and production order. DVDs aren't any better, offering the option to use either order, but still no chronological order.
• DC Super Hero Girls:
  • The episode "#Beeline" featured Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Giganta, Star Sapphire, and Livewire as all already part of a villain team as well as the Super Hero Girls being familiar with them when it first aired. Prior to this however, only Star Sapphire had been formally introduced as a villain in the show proper in #HateTriangle. Livewire, Giganta, and Catwoman make their debut as villains in "#ShockItToMe", "#SheMightBeGiant", and "#FightAtTheMuseum" respectively, all of which though aired after "#Beeline". Furthermore in "#FightAtTheMuseum", not only does Catwoman mention having just recently arrived in Metropolis from Gotham but at the end of the episode, she states she needs to find "new friends" after her encounter with the Super Hero Girls. "#Beeline" being out of order is ultimately showcased by the later aired two part episode "#Frenemies". Not only does "#Frenemies" mark Harleen just having moved to Metropolis but it also features the formation of the villain team.
  • "#SheMightBeGiant" is chronologically where Bumblebee debuts her proper suit of armor that's been upgraded from the Beta Outfit she wore in the premiere episodes. This episode however aired after a number of episodes which featured Bumblebee already in her new suit.
• This happened a lot with The Disney Afternoon shows but wasn't usually a problem, as they're mostly episodic shows:
  • Then there was Darkwing Duck. As a superhero show, most of its villains and secondary heroes had origin episodes or at least first appearances. Also, Morgana started out as a villain and then did a Heel–Face Turn, even becoming Darkwing's girlfriend. Needless to say, it was hard to keep up sometimes. The biggest offender is the "Just Us Justice Ducks" two-parter, which aired before a number of the participants in that episode (in particular Stegmutt, Neptunia and The Liquidator) were formally introduced.The actual production order of the episodes make way more sense in terms of continuity.
  • Goof Troop was aired out of order on syndicated channels. The series pilot was placed just a little before halfway through the series, which wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't also been a Welcome Episode. On the flipside for making the third episode first, it's a little strange seeing Pete want to apologize to PJ for doing "nasty, horrible" things when the worst thing we've seen him do is threaten to ground him (admittedly in an over-the-top manner) for failing a test. The pilot episodes establish Pete as unambiguously abusive towards PJ, with the latter unambiguously unhappy about it.
  • The The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episode "There's No Camp Like Home" features an instrumental version of the song "Nothing's Too Good for a Friend" from "The Piglet Who Would Be King" as background music—two weeks before that episode aired!
• Donkey Kong Country had a VHS tape advertised as a direct-to-video movie, titled; Donkey Kong Country: The Legend of the Crystal Coconut. The "direct-to-video movie" was actually four episodes from the first season of the show (Legend of the Crystal Coconut, Bug-A-Boogie, Ape-Nesia, and Booty and the Beast), spliced together with newly-edited scenes and dialogue. The order in which the episodes are placed, however, leaves a gigantic Plot Hole in the "movie." In the third act (Ape-Nesia), there's a scene where Diddy tries to help an amnesiac DK jog his memory, with a flashback to where they were taken hostage on Kaptain Skurvy's pirate ship. However, during the final act (Booty and the Beast), the same flashback plays out in reality. Meanwhile, the episodes themselves were significantly out of order from their production codes when aired on television.
• Double Dragon (1993) was aired totally out of order come season 2. "RPM" was aired as the final episode, despite it taking place before Jawbreaker's Heel–Face Turn in "The Sight of Freedom". "Daj of the Undertown Dragons" was the actual final episode in production order. The Blu-Ray set from Discotek Media opted to fix this issue by placing season 1 in broadcast order^note With the exception of the episodes "Judgment Day" and "Dragon Hunt" which have their positions swapped. and season 2 in production order using the best know viewing orders that exist.
• DuckTales (2017) had its original third episode "The Impossible Summit of Mt. Neverrest!" (an episode about Huey and Scrooge) pushed back into December to air during the holiday season since the crew travels in the snowy mountains and the original ninth episode ("Terror of the Terra-Firmians!") pushed forward into October to act as a "Halloween" episode due to its theme of fear. While the continuity is left relatively unharmed, the producers were nevertheless unhappy with this, as it messed with the show's intended pacing by having too many Duckburg episodes in a row, two episodes in a row where Scrooge doesn't make an appearance, and multiple Webby-centric episodes airing back-to-back.
• The Fairly Oddparents:
  • The DVD "Superhero Spectacle" contains two episodes in which Timmy's parents get superpowers, but for some reason they're presented in reverse order — First they regain powers they'd had before, and later on the disc is the episode where they get their powers for the first time.
  • From the seventh season on, most of the episodes were aired out of order. Season seven episodes were still premiering even after the eighth season began (one of which didn't premiere until after the eighth season already ended). Most of season nine's episodes have all aired out of order in the US.
  • An example where it's especially confusing: "Spellementary School" is where Poof gets enrolled in a school for magical children, and "Love Triangle" is a Sequel Episode that mainly focuses on a School Play there. However, "Love Triangle" premiered first, on February 12, 2011, with "Spellementary School" two weeks later.
  • "School of Crock" is the episode where Poof learns to speak full sentences, and this continues throughout the rest of the season. However, "Fairly Old Parent" — which is one episode earlier in production order — premiered afterwards, and it'd be confusing why Poof can't speak there unless you were aware of it being out of order.
• In the entire run of Futurama, only a quarter of episodes were aired in intended sequence in both the Fox and Comedy Central runs. Just take a look at the broadcast order and compare it to the production order. The main regions of the scrambling are broadcast seasons 3 through 5 (which are a jumble of production seasons 2 through 4), as well as broadcast season 8 (the second half of production season 6). This creates the occasional continuity problem: "Leela's Homeworld", in which Leela finds out the truth about her parents, ended up airing ahead of several episodes produced beforehand, and "Jurassic Bark" contains a moment of Foreshadowing for "The Why of Fry", which is only a few episodes later in production order but several months later in broadcast order.
• A couple of episodes of Garfield and Friends aired like this during its first season. For example, "Peace and Quiet", "Wanted: Wade", and "Garfield Goes Hawaiian" - the sixth, seventh, and eighth cartoons produced - were aired first, not "Garfield's Moving Experience", "Wade, You're Afraid", and "Good Mousekeeping", the actual first through third cartoons produced. The same goes for Season 7: "Change Of Mind", "Temp Trouble", and "The Perfect Match" and "The Legend Of Johnny Ragweedseed", "Grape Expectations (part 1)", and "Catch As Cats Can't". The latter episode and "A Matter Of Conscience", "Grape Expectations (part 2)", and "Top Ten" were the first to air that season, to avoid a plot-hole in the U.S. Acres cartoon.
  • The Nine Story re-master puts a season 7 episode, "The Horror Hostess; Newsworthy Wade" in between "Mystic Manor; Flop Goes The Weasel; The Legend of Long Jon" and "Lemon Aid; Hog Noon; Video Airlines". When this was the order these three aired on Boomerang, fans assumed it was a mistake due to another show's marathon pre-empting the slot, but it's the actual order of the remaster.
• Season two of Gargoyles had 52 episodes, making it impossible to tell which would be ready on time. Hence, given the show's very tight continuity, the episodes had to be split into various "blocks" where episodes could be aired in any order within each block. Though they did still run into a problem with Owen's stone arm, as two episodes intended to air before it happened ended up being delayed.
• The final two episodes of Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet were broadcast the wrong way round (the last episode second-to-last and the second-to-last episode last), what was annoying about this was that the Mysterons were finally defeated in the last episode (or were they?), and the episodes where released on DVD in the broadcast order. This ultimately was the final nail in a coffin full of network screwing. However, at a Fanderson convention that took place that year the last five episodes of the series were screened long before they were aired, in order.
• Fox Kids aired much of Godzilla: The Series out of order (such as airing "What Dreams May Come" before "Leviathan") due to the Pokémon: The Original Series vs Digimon Adventure war they had with Kids' WB! at the time of all three shows' airing during 1998-2000. The original airdates put King Cobra's debut in "Monster Wars," when it should have not-quite died in the episode aired right after that, "Competition." Averted by Netflix, who put the series in production order (albeit misnaming "Talkin' Trash" and "D.O.A", the third and fourth episodes, respectively, as the other).
• The premieres of each Good Vibes episode from Ep. 2 onwards were all aired in the wrong order instead of chronological order. The most notable example being Red Tuxedo, which was the intended season finale, airing as the eighth episode, while Backstage Babs (the ninth episode chronologically) aired as the season finale (and ended up as the series finale too).
• Season 2 of Gormiti: The Lords of Nature Return haves a bunch of episodes that are clearly out of order:
  • Episode 12 ends with Jessica having a dream where she foresees the awakening of the Army of Darkness, which happens only in episode 14.
  • Episode 19 should be set between episodes 22 and 23, since not only it interrupts a story arc that began the episode before and continues in the next three, but also ends with an hook to the season's final story arc.
• A cross series example happened with The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy and Evil Con Carne. When the shows' creator decided to end Evil Con Carne to focus on Billy and Mandy, one of the former show's main characters, General Skarr, was transplanted to the latter show, with his introductory episode mentioning that his former show's eponymous organization was disbanded. However, Skarr's first Billy and Mandy episode aired in July 2004, a few months before the final episodes of Evil Con Carne aired in October, which showed the organization still active and Skarr still a part of it.
• Grojband suffered this at the hands of Cartoon Network and Teletoon, with both networks airing many episodes from the first half of the season completely out of order. To give some examples, the series pilot "Smash-Up Terby/Queen Bee" was the eighth episode shown by CN and the fourth broadcasted by Teletoon, while "Monster of Rock/One-Plant Band" was the second episode produced but became CN's sixth episode and Teletoon's first episode.
• The Harvey Beaks two-part special "Steampunks" is part of Season 2, but set during Season 1, resulting in things like Michelle still in her egg despite having hatched in the first episode of Season 2. On the other hand, it also explains some things like why Moff is a Jerkass towards Harvey throughout the episode while showing greater tolerance of him in the rest of the series. On Hulu, the episodes are appropriately placed as the first in the season (as they were produced).
• This happened to Hey Arnold! a lot:
  • Back in 1998 Ep 48, "Arnold's Room", aired September 9, surrounded a Zany Scheme in which Sid takes over the titular room to show off to his rich classmate, Lorenzo. Ep 44, "Rich Kid", had introduced said classmate... but aired December 28. The kicker? Those two episodes were the only episodes in which this classmate had a speaking role.
  • After the first season, production decided to replace Ms. Slovak with Mr. Simmons as the teacher for Arnold's class. Simmons' first appearance was at the start of Season 2, but several episodes produced during Season 1 still hadn't aired by this time, so Ms. Slovak appeared a couple times after being replaced. One leftover Season 1 episode even made it all the way deep into Season 3.
  • "The Journal", which aired in November 2002, was the last episode produced and was meant as a lead in to the soon cancelled Jungle Movie (which was released in 2017). It aired before 4 other held back episodes from season 5. The final held back episode, "Phoebe's Little Problem/Grandpa's Packard" aired in 2004.
• The first three episodes in Season 2 of Jackie Chan Adventures is made of episodes that took place during the events of Season 1, creating some strange inconsistencies like Jackie having to find the Snake Talisman again^note though it did explain how the talisman ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art during Season 1, Tohru still being part of the Dark Hand, and Shendu still imprisoned in his stone form.
• Jane and the Dragon was originally planned to have much more apparent continuity between episodes than most animated shows for kids but was rewritten to be more episodic when the writers were confronted with this eventuality.
• The character Regina is referenced in episode 60 of Jem when she doesn't appear until a few episodes later.
• Justice League:
  • During the first season, the producers held back the airing of "Injustice For All" eight months, so that it would coincide with the Video Game with the same name. But since it did air elsewhere during that period, it didn't take long for spoilers and pirated copies to appear online. However, both "Fury" and "Legends" have have elements that didn't appear until "Injustice for All".^note "Fury" has its main villain gather the Injustice Gang sans Luthor, Joker, Cheetah, and Ultra-Humanite, with Shade and Copperhead commenting that she's a better boss than Luthor and "Legends" opens with Luthor in the Powered Armor designed to save his life controlling a mecha against the League.
  • Season 2, Everything between "A Better World" and "Starcrossed" has their airing order rearranged from their production order. "The Terror Beyond" and "Eclipsed" had their airing order swapped from their production order, as did "Hereafter" and "Secret Society", and "Comfort and Joy" and "Wild Cards". However, this doesn't really affect anything, even with Green Lantern and Hawkgirl's Relationship Upgrade in "Wild Cards" despite "Comfort and Joy" being the episode before it in production order, but airing after.
• KaBlam!:
  • The series aired almost all of its episodes in their correct order during the first run- however when the show went into reruns on both the main network and Nicktoons, Nick screwed up the original episode order. For example, the first episode of the show would be reran as the twelfth, with the fifth episode airing as the first. For the longest time, this also became the episode order listed on sites such as Wikipedia until the original orders from Nick's website resurfaced in 2010.
  • The Life With Loopy pilot episode, "Goldfish Heaven", aired as the show's seventh episode on TV. While the shorts weren't too continuity-heavy (usually a past episode might get referenced in another episode and that'll be it), it was still clear from Larry introducing the characters and setting as if nobody had seen the series before and the rough look of the animation and characters that it was the first episode. Due to the roughness of the episode compared to the rest of season one, Nick might not have wanted it to air as part of the first KaBlam! episode.
• Kaeloo:
  • The pilot was remade as an episode of the actual series, but this episode was aired third instead of first.
  • In Episode 45, Stumpy is telling the others he just met a girl who had already been established to be his girlfriend in Episode 40.
• Kim Possible:
  • The third season Grand Finale movie was shown before some of the remaining episodes, leaving some to wonder why the Last-Minute Hookup was forgotten in the "next" episode.
  • Early episodes of the series ended up in an outright baffling order. The episode "Tick, Tick, Tick" was meant to be the first episode and clearly shows Team Possible's first run-in with Dr. Drakken and Shego, but was originally broadcast after another Drakken-Shego episode ("Crush") which was originally meant to be episode 13. Several other events, such as Bonnie becoming cheer captain and changing the cheerleading uniforms to ones with a completely different color scheme in "Number One" , make it clear that the episode order was shuffled around quite a bit - the cheerleading uniforms switch back and forth between designs every two or three episodes (and the cheerleading squad changes captains each time, but it's a little more subtle), Ron becomes the mascot in the ninth broadcast episode ("Attack of the Killer Bebes") even though he already was the mascot in the second broadcast episode ("Sink or Swim"), and various other continuity errors occur frequently.
• King of the Hill:
  • Season 3 experienced this. A plot arc throughout the season was Luanne's hair slowly growing back after it was burnt off; Some of the episodes where it's completely grown back are followed by episodes where it's much shorter than usual. They were much more careful in Season 4, since Debbie doesn't appear in any episodes following her death.
  • The season 4 episode "Old Glory" had a slight continuity error showing Peggy with an old Kaypro computer when the previous episode "Hillennium" had her new iMac arrived. This is because "Old Glory" was produced before "Hillennium".
• In the first season of Legion of Super-Heroes, several episodes made brief references to previous ones, but this bit everyone in the ass with a Continuity Nod in "Brain Drain" mentioning a run-in with magic—from "Child's Play", which hadn't aired yet. After that, the second season avoided them entirely.
• Happened on Lilo & Stitch: The Series quite often.
  • "Elastico" ends with Lilo putting on a hula for several of Stitch's cousins, three of which (Yaarp, Slushy & Topper) all were from episodes that aired after this one (with "Yaarp" actually being the next one airing wise).
  • For the first part of the show, Nani worked at a rental shack, then was fired from her job before getting a job at the Birds of Paradise Hotel. "Melty" shows her first day at said job, while "Nosy," which aired after it, shows her getting the job for the first time. Even stranger, "Topper" (which aired right before "Melty") and "Sinker" (which aired after) explicitly show/mention her working at the rental shack, meaning she suddenly has a new job, then is back to her old one several episodes later.
  • "Cannonball" is the first official appearance of Lilo & Stitch's modified dune buggy but aired after several episodes had already shown them using it.
• The Looney Tunes Show seems to have been aired this way. For example, in "The Foghorn Leghorn Story", Foghorn's secretary tells him that "he's (Daffy) the idiot who ruined your company!" This exact event happens in "Working Duck", which aired a few months after that episode did.
• The Magic Adventures of Mumfie episode "The Album" reveals the order in which the episodes after Mumfie's Quest happened, revealing that they originally aired out of order. For example, the first page of the book had a jellybean on it, meaning Captain Jellybean's Treasure was the first episode that should have aired. The first aired episode was actually "Mumfie and the Wellwisher", which was ninth in the chronological order, according to Mumfie's album.
• Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series had what is for all intents the season finale down to the title, "The Final Face Off", be followed by five more episodes.
• Miraculous Ladybug is shown pretty out of order. This isn't usually an issue, but it can cause a Series Continuity Error here and there. For example: "Pixelator" is clearly supposed to take place before "Kung Food", "Darkblade", "Antibug" and "Guitar Villain", as it introduces the recurring character Jagged Stone. However, this episode was first shown after all of those. This is made especially glaring because it was aired directly after "Guitar Villain", which prominently featured Jagged Stone, and showed off a pair of sunglasses that Marinette made for him at the end of "Pixelator".
  • The second season was aired mostly in an order that made sense, but "Reverser" was clearly meant to take place after the "Queen's Battle" episodes, since at one point Queen Wasp is mentioned.
  • The third season didn't have it much better, as "Gamer 2.0" featured the return of various villains from previous episodes, including Desparada, which is supposed to come before that episode. "Party Crasher" is the best example, though, because it features three new Miraculous users^note King Monkey, Viperion, and Pegasus, however, judging by the other character's reactions, two of them had already been introduced in earlier episodes which aired a few months later.
  • The fourth season had many episodes released out of order, the most notable example being "Dearest Family", which featured the villain Qilin, whose debut episode didn't air until a several later, as well as various plot points from the increase in continuity being harder to follow without knowing the intended order.
• Mixels ended up getting its shorts shuffled randomly from their production numbers, leading to some characters appearing in episodes before their debut. One of the biggest offenders is the Electroids, who technically debut in the episode "Changing a Light Bulb", which is the second episode in production order, but the tenth episode aired.
• Molly of Denali:
  • The first produced episode, "Grandpa's Drum/Have Canoe, Will Paddle", didn't air on TV until a month after the series premiered.
  • While "Molly and Elizabeth/Uqiquq" was the first episode of season 2 to air, it was actually the fourth episode in production order. The actual first episode of season 2 is "Mouse in the Treehouse/Leader of the Pack".
• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023): For unknown reasons, the episode “Goodnight, Moon Girl” was switched with “Moon Girl’s Day Off”. A particularly egregious example due to promos for the former episode having aired on Disney Channel in the week leading up, and the latter episode having a reference to the former.
• Most of the first season of Moral Orel and some of the second season was aired out of order. The first season's finale was aired first, so that a Christmas episode would air in December, although that initially put new viewers off from the show due to the first season's Downer Ending, making some think it was intentionally humorous, while it was supposed to be out of place with the rest of the season. The last three aired episodes of the first season were ones held back by Standards & Practices, as the final one aired (featuring Black Comedy Rape) was intended to be the second episode. The third season avoids this, partially by featuring a "[Number] out of 13" at the beginning of each episode.
• Motorcity suffered from this from the third episode on. While the story was told in an episodic format, focus episodes for each of the Burners were heavily shuffled around, notably prolonging Julie's focus episode (originally episode 6) and a key Chuck episode (episode 8). Someone wrote an explanation about that.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot, much to the writers' frustration, had the hour-long season two finale "Escape From Cluster Prime" air in the middle of the season. This made for the odd situation of Vexus continuing to appear and gloat about how she'll one day make Jenny join Cluster Prime in new episodes airing months after she's been ousted from her position as Queen thanks to Jenny helping liberate her people from her totalitarian rule.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The episode "Hearth's Warming Eve" is Season 2's 13th episode in production order, but 11th in broadcast order (since it's a Christmas Episode, more or less, and moving it up put it closer to the holiday in question). This bumped the 11th and 12th episodes, "Family Appreciation Day" and "Baby Cakes", to spots 12 and 13, respectively. Fortunately, none of the episodes in question referenced each other (and, considering the nature of the show, could be watched out of BOTH orders without having any negative impact on continuity). Hasbro's website and My Little Pony YouTube channel, The Hub and its website, Google Play, and Netflix all number the episodes in production order; the iTunes Store ordering went back and forth through both styles, but it eventually settled on production^{(a quick primer)} "Hearth's Warming Eve" was initially in slot 13, going with production order - only to be moved to slot 11, airdate order, the very next day. "Family Appreciation Day" was put up also as Episode 11, resulting in two Episode 11s. "Baby Cakes" went up as episode 12 — implying they would later move "Hearth's Warming Eve" back to 13 and go with production order. However, sometime after putting up episode 15, they instead moved "Family Appreciation Day" and "Baby Cakes" to their airdate order slots. Yet it didn't end there; over half a year later, they switched from season-based listings to volume-based listings (seemingly due to the then-recently-added Season 3 consisting of half as many episodes as each of the previous seasons), with the new listings putting the three back in production order. While all this was going on, "The Last Roundup", fourteenth episode in both production and broadcast order, was dropped from the queue completely due to controversy involving a character in the Cold Open, leaving the middle of Season 2 in absolute flux. Confused by all this yet?
  • The episode "Just for Sidekicks" is Season 3's 8th episode in production order, but 11th in broadcast order (this is because it and the 12th episode, "Games Ponies Play", are Synchronous Episodes). This bumped the 9th, 10th and 11th episodes - "Apple Family Reunion", "Spike at Your Service" and "Keep Calm and Flutter On" - to spots 8, 9 and 10, respectively.
  • Almost every foreign dub of Season 2 seems to broadcast "A Canterlot Wedding" (the finale) either right after or before "The Return of Harmony" (the premiere), in order to sell Pony Wedding toys which came earlier.
  • "Scare Master" is Season 5's 15th episode in production order. However, with the episode being a Halloween Episode, it was saved up for that holiday and ended up being the 21st episode in broadcast order. That led to a pair of odd situations. First, one of the end result of holding off the episode for six weeks was the fact that the season's Christmas Episode, "Hearthbreakers" ended up airing a week before the Halloween Episode. Second, production order wise, "Scare Master" was meant to air before the Wham Episode "Crusaders of the Lost Mark", and had it not been for the episode being set on Equestria's equivalent of Halloween, then the Out of Order airing of the episode would have been more obvious.^Explanation"Crusaders of the the Lost Mark" featured the Cutie Mark Crusaders finally getting their Cutie Marks at the end of the episode, and with the trio's Nightmare Night outfits in "Scare Master" covering their flanks, it wasn't an issue whether or not the CMC were depicted with their Cutie Marks in this episode.
  • The Season 6 Episode "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks" was the ninth episode of that season in production order, but was the nineteenth episode aired, pushing ten episodes up the broadcast order from that of their production, from "The Saddle Row Review" to "Buckball Season".
• The Noddy Shop showed episodes of Noddy's Toyland Adventures out of order. For example, the very first episode of the series, "Noddy Looses Some Sixpence", aired with the 27th episode of The Noddy Shop, "Something's Lost, Something's Found". Sometimes, the episodes would be aired further ahead than their original order: The Noddy Shop's first episode, "The Magic Key", featured "Noddy and the Special Key", the twelfth episode of Toyland Adventures. This was averted for the first two Series 4 episodes aired on the show, but then they aired in a random order beginning with "Noddy and the Noisy Drum".
  • CBBC's run of The Noddy Shop ran into this problem at least three times when they were premiering new episodes of the show:
    • The first episode they aired was the "Anything Can Happen At Christmas" special.
    • Episode 23, "The Big Fight", aired in between episode 18 ("Hooray For The Kids") and episode 20 ("We All Say Boo!"). This resulted in episode 19 ("The Mystery Box") accidentally being skipped.
    • Episode 24, "Following Directions", aired in between episode 21 ("Trying Something New") and episode 22 ("The Fish Story").
• The Patrick Star Show: Episode 13B, "Mid-Season Finale" ended up not being the last episode of the half-season to air. Episode 12B, "Super Sitters" was left in the dust, getting an Early-Bird Release on DVD and not even having a scheduled airdate when "Mid-Season Finale" premiered.
• On April Fools Day 2007, [adult swim] aired the final episode of Perfect Hair Forever, but then aired the rest of the series IN REVERSE, made it look like old VHS tapes, and added grammatically incorrect subtitles. At one point, the subtitles shown were actually for an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode.
• Not only did Kids' WB not air every episode of Phantom Investigators (only airing six of it's thirteen due to dissatisfaction of not having enough male viewers), the episodes they did air were not aired in order. After the premiere of the first episode, "Demon Driver", they then aired the ninth episode ("The Year Of The Snake") second, then seventh ("Stall Of Doom"), eighth ("Were-Dog"), fourth ("Birthday Presence"), and third ("Omega Pizza Pi") before they dropped the series. "Birthday Presence" was also scheduled to air first instead of the actual first episode (and was the episode given to critics for screening before the show premiered), but Kids' WB switched it out with "Demon Driver" at the last minute.
• PJ Masks: In the season 2 episode "Wacky Floats", the team suddenly has a new Robot Buddy named PJ Robot, and it's revealed they all got new powers. However, these new aspects aren't given a proper introduction until the episodes "PJ Robot" and "PJ Power Up" respectively, proving that those two episodes are chronologically set before "Wacky Floats".
• Planet Sheen unfortunately suffered this. Low ratings and negative reviews for the first three episodes caused Nickelodeon to air the remaining 23 episodes this way. The show was banished to Nicktoons to air the remaining 13 episodes, and the show was cancelled after one season in February 2013 after airing the 24th episode^note Episodes 25 and 26 had already aired at that point. The production company behind it, Omation Animation Studio, shut down and became dormant since the show ended, with all of its three works was distributed by the Nickelodeon Animation Studio.
• A winter-themed episode of The Powerpuff Girls (2016) wasn't aired for several months in America because Cartoon Network wanted to air it in winter. This is despite Blossom's love interest debuting in this episode. Without it, Jake just feels like he pops out of nowhere when Blossom "first" references him.
• Ezekiel Rage first appears in the fourth episode of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, and everyone is shocked to see him again. Five episodes later, they meet him for the first time.
• In an episode of Rekkit Rabbit midway through Season 2, Sarah presents to Jay her new friend Alejandra... except she already appeared three times before that episode.
• Recess:
  • While Recess didn't have this big of an issue normally, though there are a few episodes that aired out of order. "The Great Jungle Gym Standoff", which aired as episode two (part B), does not have Gus in the episode, making it take place before he moved to town. Gus's first appearance is in episode one part B, "The New Kid". It could be possible that Disney/ABC wanted Gus to be introduced in the first episode, which is why the episodes aired like this.
  • "Germ Warfare" aired before "Good Ole T.J.", while it should've aired afterwards. At the beginning of the latter episode, Gus mentions that Gretchen is never absent from school, which she was in one part of "Germ Warfare".
  • Chronologically, the three episodes of the sixth season take place before the events of Recess: School's Out, which served as the Grand Finale, and were also produced before the movie during the fifth season, but hadn't aired as part of it. Though had the movie not have been a success, the episodes wouldn't have aired at all- the show was supposed to end with the fifth season and movie, but thanks to the movie's success, the show was renewed.
  • After the first and second seasons had aired, ABC had both season's episodes go out of order for their repeat schedule. Disney Channel only made it worse by re-arranging the individual shorts as well. By 2007, the episodes were back to their original orders.
• Robotboy: Every single episode aside from "Six Million Euro Man" was aired in a different order then the production order. This wasn’t really bad in the case of the first series, as continuity was scarce, and asides from a killed off villain making a cameo later on in air order, nothing really showed they were aired out of order. But then in the second series, continuity started showing up more often, this had the effect of Felonious Hexx's first episode (his debut) and Protoboy's third episode to air after and before their precursors respectively.
• Rocket Power: The episode "Banned on the Run", in which the Midtown Skate Park was built, aired after several episodes that showed the park already open.
• The Rocketeer:
  • According to Nicole Dubuc, the episode "Recipe For Disaster", which introduces The Cast Iron Chef, is produced before "Runaway Bulldog", where the characters already know him, despite airing afterwards.
  • A more notable example is "Cleared For Takeoff/First Class", which formally introduces Valerie, despite airing after her previous two appearances in "Flight Class Heroes" and "Valerie The Valkyrie". Another clue is that "Flight Class Heroes" features Kit as already being a Valkyrie Flight Academy student and "Cleared For Takeoff" is the episode where she convinces her mother to let her attend.
• Season 1 of Rocko's Modern Life is another example. The fact that Heffer's adopted family are literally wolves is supposed to be a big shock, but their formal introduction to the show aired after they had made a couple of appearances. Likewise, Filburt switches back and forth between being an anonymous Obstructive Bureaucrat and Rocko and Heffer's friend, and Rocko is shown to be already working at Kind-of-a-Lot-O-Comics before the episode where he is hired there.
• Rosie's Rules: As is common with PBS series, the episodes air out of order. The most extreme example has to be "Sister Surprise/Rosie's Twin," which is the third episode in broadcast order, but in production order, it's actually the eleventh episode.
• Rugrats usually doesn't do continuity, but they made a few episodes involving kids from Angelica's pre-school coming to her house... which, in the US, ended up airing long before the episode introducing the pre-school was aired.
  • After September 2002, the show's airing order basically became a RNG, with the last episode aired, "Hurricane Alice" (which aired in August 2004), being episode 168B despite the show finishing at 172 episodes. The actual last episode, Kimi Takes the Cake, aired back in October 2002.
• The First Wish, the first episode of Shimmer and Shine where Leah first gets her genies Shimmer and Shine, making it the start of the events of the series, was aired as the season 1 finale in the US.
• The Simpsons:
  • Fox changed the mid-season episode "The Father, the Son, & the Holy Guest Star" to the season finale. Probably justified because the episode made fun of some aspects of Catholicism, and the date it was originally scheduled to air was very close to Pope John Paul II's death, and the change didn't mess with any continuity of the season or series.
  • The first season had its order screwed with enormously, resulting in Santa's Little Helper not appearing in half the episodes despite being introduced in what ended up as the series premiere (with the intended premiere, "Some Enchanted Evening", airing last). The major reason for Season 1 becoming all jumbled around was that the episodes entering production prior to "Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire"^note  8th episode in production order but first to air, had such terrible animation that Matt Groening and his team kept sending the episodes back to Korea to be redone.^note  "Some Enchanted Evening" was remade no fewer than three times... and Matt still wasn't happy with the final result. By the time early episodes reached the point they were "airable", the fall schedule had already been locked in sans Simpsons, so Fox slotted the series in the first available place... which was in late-December. As it happened, there was a Christmas Episode ready to go, so it became the premiere.
  • "Lisa the Simpson" on Disney+ got moved from Season 9, episode 17 (in-between "Dumbbell Indemnity" and "This Little Wiggy") to Season 9, episode 3 (in-between "The Principal and the Pauper" and "Lisa's Sax"). This actually reflects its original production order, with it being produced during the season 8 run, same as the first two episodes that aired as part of season 9.
  • There was a very short-lived production season (the "3G0X" production season) of only four episodes ("The Springfield Files", "Lisa's Sax", "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious", and "Simpson Tide") made as part of Season 7 (co-run by Al Jean and Mike Reiss, as opposed to Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein like the rest of the season), but none of them actually aired during said season. Instead, they were aired as part of Seasons 8 and 9.
• Sofia the First is fairly episodic even with episodes referencing and building on each other. However, some of the episodes produced after Elena and the Secret of Avalor aired beforehand in the summer of 2016. In that special, Sofia's amulet turns pink after she frees Elena from the amulet. Season 4 is said to have a more serialized narrative, where this can hopefully get sorted out.
• South Park: had this happen a few times.
  • The fourth season had episodes aired in three cycles. After the first four episodes were broadcast in April 2000, the staff worked on the next seven with the intention of airing them in June and July of that year. Episode 405 was a retelling of Great Expectations with Pip as the main character. They didn't finish it until the Sunday after Thanksgiving, airing it three days later in the middle of the third cycle. Its long production time is cited as one of the reasons the show's staffers (save for Matt Stone) hate it so much.
  • "Cancelled", had a joke that was supposed to play off the fact that the series reached 100 episodes ("A show should never go past a hundred episodes, or else it starts to get stale with ridiculously stupid plotlines and settings"). However, it was the 97th episode to air, thus ruining the joke.
  • If you watch Season 8 in production order, you'd notice something odd. In 801, "Good Times With Weapons", Cartman briefly talks about The Passion of the Christ. In 802, "AWESOM-O", Cartman's mom mentions that he's "still supposed to be grounded for trying to exterminate the Jews two weeks ago", likely confusing production order viewers. In episode 803, "Up the Down Steroid", Kyle and Cartman have a serious discussion about the morality of Cartman's plan, which Cartman counters with what The Passion taught him about Jews and Hell. 804, "The Passion of the Jew", is the culmination of what 801 and 803 are building up towards, and the plot involves Cartman trying to exterminate the Jews. So why does the second episode refer to something that doesn't happen for two episodes? Because it was the fifth episode to air in the eighth season, and the show itself has a unique Production Lead Time.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series:
  • The first season had several episodes aired out of their intended order, although since the first season didn't have as much continuity as all the later seasons, it wasn't too jarring. Difficulty now is figuring out just what the intended order actually was, since even the production order doesn't make perfect sense.
  • When the series became more serialized and actually numbered the episodes, it became more noticeable. In Season 2, the "Tablet of Time" and "Ravages of Time" two-parter aired before "Blade, the Vampire Hunter" and "The Immortal Vampire." The latter two-parter resolved the Morbius arc and clarified how Spider-Man's neogenic disease was being treated, while the former two-parter was supposed to lead directly into the season's final two episodes.
  • In Season 3, "The Spot" was aired before "Venom Returns" and "Carnage" - even though those two episodes set-up the time-dilation technology and Tony Stark's involvement with it. As it aired, viewers wondered why Tony put in a brief appearance in that episode and why he was so concerned about the technology. And like with the Season 2 example, "The Spot" was supposed to set-up the season's concluding two-parter.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • The last two episodes of season 1, "Hooky" and "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy II", were held off until February and March 2001. The rest of the season had premiered from 1999-2000.
  • "Graveyard Shift" and "Krusty Love" premiered in the US on September 6, 2002, 364 days after the preceding half hour, "The Secret Box" and "Band Geeks", which aired on September 7, 2001. These episodes aired in Canada on January 24, and had even aired before then in South Korea and the Netherlands.
  • There are six episodes in season 7's "Legends of Bikini Bottom" mini-series. Five of the episodes aired on consecutive days in January 2011. However, "The Curse of the Hex" was held off until after the rest of the season had aired, premiering in June when the rest of the season finished in February.
  • One particularly bizarre example is the Season 5 episode "Goo Goo Gas", which didn't premiere until July 2009, long after the rest of the season had already aired. Incidentally, this was on the same day Season 7 premiered.
  • In general, the series has a peculiar habit of airing season premieres before the previous season has finished airing. The only exceptions to the rule are Season 4, which began airing six months after the last episode of Season 3 aired, and Season 14, which premiered the day after Season 13 finished.
  • The Flying Dutchman's debut is different between airing and production order. His intended first appearance is meant to be "Scaredy Pants", the 9th episode produced. However, in packaging and airing order, "Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost" (where he appears in a comic book) comes first, despite it being the 15th episode produced.
• Technically, MTV aired many episodes of Spider-Man: The New Animated Series out of order, but then again, production order also isn't how they place in continuity, either, with the DVD setting the episodes take place in continuity. However, this is very noticeable with the episode "Head Over Heels", which had a pre-Electro Max Dillon, but aired after "The Party", which featured his transformation into Electro.
• Static Shock: The episodes "Consequences" and "Trouble Squared" were produced for Season 2, but didn't air on Kids' WB! until Season 3, which is why the episodes have the original art style of the first two seasons, Static dons his original uniform, Richie does not appear as Gear, and Daisy has her old look.
• Steven Universe:
  • The Italian airing of the show shuffles around many episodes in the first half of Season 1. As a result, "Steven the Sword Fighter" is aired before "So Many Birthdays", "Lars and the Cool Kids" and "Onion Trade", meaning that for a bunch of episodes Pearl keeps shifting back and forth from her first design to the post-regeneration one.
  • "Open Book", "Say Uncle", "Story for Steven", and "Shirt Club" were all intended to air during Season 1 between "Rose's Scabbard" and "The Message", but the marathon for the Season 1 finale pushed them back to Season 2. Ironically, "Say Uncle" itself was produced during Season 2 and was meant to air during Season 1.
• Episodes 3 and 4 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) were shown the other way around on VHS, so kids who didn't see them when they first aired on TV (stations didn't re-air the earliest episodes often) would often wind up confused about who this Baxter Stockman fellow was.
  • The series had an even bigger example later on with the Vacation in Europe arc, which tied into events from season 4 but didn’t air in America till season 7. And the beginning of the arc also had issues with this, as they clearly switched the first two episodes and hid it with poor editing; the first episode, Tower of Power, shows scenes of the turtles leaving for vacation but the rest of the episode has Shredder and April in Europe without explanation, the second episode, Rust Never Sleeps, actually establishes how Shredder and April both end up going to Europe.
• In Tangled: The Series, the plot-relevant episodes "Queen for a Day" through "Secret of the Sundrop" aired consecutively toward the end of the first season. But the episodes' production codes reveal that they were originally intended to be slightly more spaced apart, with "Queen for a Day" and "Painter's Block" coming between "One Angry Princess" and "Pascal's Story", and "Not in the Mood" coming between "Big Brothers of Corona" and "The Wrath of Ruthless Ruth". The change in order worked to the show's advantage, as it created a much better and exciting sense of forward momentum during the last third of Season 1, devoid of any filler.
• Teen Titans:
  • Kids' WB! aired episodes out of order. Since Teen Titans didn't start too tight with continuity this wasn't so bad - until the second season, when they aired "Titan Rising", the episode where Terra joins the team, but then aired "Date with Destiny" and "Transformation" afterwards. So basically Terra joins the team and then the next two episodes she's nowhere to be seen, confusing the kids that didn't get Cartoon Network, which aired these episodes in production order, and correctly showed "Transformation" and "Date With Destiny" before "Titan Rising"
  • Also, Cartoon Network aired "Final Exam" as the series premiere and "Divide and Conquer" as the third episode, creating weirdness concerning the first mention of Slade, as he didn't get mentioned in "Divide and Conquer".
• Teen Titans Go!: An instrumental of "The Pee-Pee Dance" from "Serious Business" is used in "Waffles", which aired eight months before the former. This was probably due to said episode's Troubled Production, as the censors originally disapproved of the episode.
• Thomas & Friends was, in its early seasons, based directly on the Railway Series books, each of which contained four short stories that linked together to form a miniseries. The TV series often these split up so that the parts of a book could end up not just out of order, but in different SEASONS ^note Such as Troublesome Engines, where the Tenders & Turntables/Trouble In The Sheds/Percy Runs Away trilogy are kept together in Season 1 but Henry & The Elephant ends up in Season 4, resulting in Percy appearing in what was supposed to be the start of the chain of events that introduced him. . You can't really put them back in the correct order either, because the orphaned storylines often had to be substantially re-written to explain how characters got into a situation ^note  especially "The Trouble With Mud" whose entire first half is changed, as well as characters appearing before they should have been introduced, the obviously different narrator and the stylistic changes.
  • Due to the show's October 9 premiere date in 1984, the 23rd and 26th episodes, "Dirty Objects" and "Thomas' Christmas Party" aired together in their initial broadcast on December 25. The 24th and 25th episodes, Off the Rails and Down the Mine, aired on January 8, 1985 after no airing of the show on Janaury 1. In later airings, Off the Rails and Down the Mine are aired inbetween Dirty Objects and Thomas' Christmas Party.
  • In the later CGI Seasons, there are some episodes which go straight to DVD and never get aired at all. The DVDs also show the episodes that were broadcast in a completely different arrangement.
    • The yearly specials are also released at different times in different countries, so often the new characters that inevitably debut will appear in the series before viewers actually know who they are.
• Part of the first season of ThunderCats was initially aired out of order; mostly this does not affect much, as the first season is largely in Anachronic Order, but there is a five-parter that is spread over several weeks as a result. Subsequent syndication airings corrected this problem, but the DVD boxed set uses the original, erroneous airing order. This happened all the time during the 80s. A combination of Animation Age Ghetto and Viewers Are Morons resulted in Five Episode Pilots and multipart episodes played out of order or blasted across the entire year.
• The Wild Thornberrys aired an ep about Nigel Thornberry getting knighted in March 2004... after they had aired an ep where a character addresses him as Sir Nigel in February.
• The second season of W.I.T.C.H. has an insanely frustrating one where they aired the Halloween Episode about four episodes early to be close to Halloween, but the second series was a serial that went almost directly from one episode to the next. There were several characters (re-)introduced, new terms mentioned, and alliances changed (i.e. why were they working with Phobos, why the hell was there a talking cat, what are regents?) and it ruined one of the big surprises near the end of season.
• The Transformers: Not all 98 episodes aired were ever in the same production order, and no English-language DVD companies that have released the show has ever arranged them in the same order. To avoid the issue where story chronology would contradict with the airdates, the TFWiki.net stuck with production order.
• Work It Out Wombats!: The premiere episode, "Snout And About/Zadie's Shell Shuffle," is actually the third episode in production order. The actual first episode, "Junior Supers/Measure for Measure," was aired the day after.

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