Poorly Disguised Pilot / Western Animation

• This was a common occurrence in the Golden Age era shorts, since one-shot characters were frequently made in hopes of becoming popular enough to become a studio icon (though in some cases their popularity was unexpected and just rolled with):
  • Popeye the Sailor (1933), the first animated Popeye cartoon, was actually billed as a Betty Boop short. Betty herself was Demoted to Extra in it.
  • The Andy Panda short "Knock Knock" is actually a vehicle for Walter Lantz's intended new star, Woody Woodpecker, with the bird getting much more screen time than Andy and his poppa.
  • Daffy Duck first appeared as a side character in the Porky Pig cartoon Porky's Duck Hunt. Though Daffy would continue being a foil for Porky in many later Looney Tunes shorts, his next few appearances had him go solo with title billing.
  • You'd be forgiven for not knowing that Elmer Fudd was in fact a Looney Tunes mainstay before his adversary Bugs Bunny, who officially debuted in "A Wild Hare", one of Elmer's already ongoing cartoons. Incidentally, a prototypical version of Bugs was also first used in the Porky short Porky's Hare Hunt, in much the same way as Daffy.
• American Dad!:
  • "Introducing the Naughty Stewardesses" feels like a backdoor pilot for a show that was never made. Stan and Francine's plot in the episode is devoted to them teaming up with the titular group of Sexy Stewardesses as they try to stop Mark Cuban from blowing up the sun (which actually turns out to be an attempt to rig the Phoenix Suns' games), in a parody of shows like Charlie's Angels, and even ends with an announcer telling the viewers to go to Fox's website to take a quiz to find out which Naughty Stewardess they could be, suggesting that the writers were either hoping for Fox to green-light a Naughty Stewardesses series or were trying to tease viewers into expecting a spin-off. Lampshaded when Francine tells the Stewardesses they should have their own TV show. Ultimately, nothing ever came of it, and the Naughty Stewardesses were never seen again.
  • Parodied in "Top of the Steve", where Steve runs away from home and, due to a technicality, enrolls in an all-girls' school. As the show goes on, things appear to be working in Steve's favor, and Roger correctly deduces that they are in a spin-off. They find that they cannot escape it, until they realize the spin-off is filmed in Vancouver, and the only way out is to sing a Beatles song, since Canada can't afford the publishing rights, so they start to sing, "Hey..." but get cut off before they say, "Jude".
• On Animaniacs, "Spellbound" gives Pinky and the Brain a full half-hour story before getting their own show, and "One Flew Over The Cuckoo Clock" was a pilot for a Slappy Squirrel series. The credits for the latter episode also feature different end credits music than the other episodes of Animaniacs.
  • The episode "Plan Brain From Outer Space" from the actual Pinky and the Brain series was another example of this. It was intended as a pilot for a show called Zalgar, The Brain Eater, which featured the titular alien trying to go after different brains of people. Most of the episode's dialogue had to be altered to remove references to the show.
  • The first season of the reboot featured short cartoons with all-new characters ("Starbox & Cindy," "The Incredible Gnome in People's Mouths"), suggesting that they might become recurring segments in future seasons if they catch on. The latter segment even said "to be continued" at the end.
    • Both segments returned in the second season.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: The "Spacecataz" cold openings that aired during the third season were, when put together, intended to be the pilot of a spinoff miniseries featuring the Mooninites and Plutonians; the idea never got off the ground, and the show dropped the cold openings before the short could be aired in its entirety (though it's available on the volume 4 DVD.)
• Arthur:
  • There was a "Postcards from Buster" special a while before the series started. The episode follows the same format as the show: Buster tours a place while recording a video, and everything we see through his camera is live-action. The biggest difference is that Arthur is there in person, and there's a subplot about D.W. trying to save money so she can see a low-rated play in New York City.
  • "In My Africa" feels like a failed pilot for a spin-off that never came out. Brain's cousin Cheikh moves to Elwood City, and he joins D.W.'s preschool class and becomes her friend. The episode has a different vibe from the rest of the series, with a majority of it being a song about Africa sung at various points. It even opens with D.W. hosting the episode instead of Arthur, suggesting that she and Cheikh have their own show. The episode's ending is a Sequel Hook, with D.W. finding a new love of learning about the globe (she now wants to write a song about Kalamazoo). Ultimately, nothing ever came from this episode. Cheikh was Demoted to Extra, but had another spotlight episode eight years later.
• Parodied in the DVD Commentary of the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Western Air Temple", where they joke that Haru, Teo, and the Duke messing around in the temple is one of these for a spin-off called The Last Street Luger with a lost pilot episode that consists of 22 minutes of Teo riding around in his wheel-chair while passing various kinds of plants.
• Batman Beyond:
  • Curiously, the episode "Zeta" was not originally intended to be a pilot for The Zeta Project, but it was deemed a good enough premise that it got its own show, albeit one Cut Short by cancellation. They did completely redesign Zeta for the spin-off to look more human-like, which doesn't stop Batman from recognizing him in the crossover episode.
  • Similarly the two part episode "The Call" was used as a proof of concept for Justice League while not actually being a poorly disguised pilot. (the two shows are in two different time periods)
• The Batman: The Animated Series episode "Showdown" feels very much like a backdoor pilot for a Jonah Hex cartoon, seeing as how Batman's only in the framing device of Ra's Al Ghul telling a story about a cowboy who thwarted one of his plans once.
• The episode "The Fear" from The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians is acknowledged by its writers as having been intended to lead into a solo Batman series (it was notable for having the first on-screen depiction of the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents^note Prior to this, Bruce Wayne mentioned his parents being killed by criminals in the first episode of Batman (1966)). And in a way, it eventually did, since it's written by Alan Burnett, who went on to produce Batman: The Animated Series.
• Ben 10: Omniverse put the characters of Gwen and Kevin on a bus, but three episodes focus on how they're doing at Gwen's college. Those episodes have Gwen take up her old Lucky Girl identity from the original series and feature supporting cast members like Professor Xagliv, school janitor/secret master magician Bezel, a reformed Hex, a Charmcaster in a position to reform and become a friend, and set the evil alien turtle Adwaita loose to become a potential Big Bad to Gwen. Word of God stated that these episodes could be spun off into a Lucky Girl show for CN Asia (where Gwen is immensely popular), but it never materialized due to the lackluster reception of Omniverse as a whole, and the entire franchise was subject to Continuity Reboot two years after its end.
• Betty Boop:
  • The (alleged) Betty Boop short Popeye the Sailor. While Betty is in the cartoon for about 30 seconds, a certain one-eyed sailor takes up most of the screentime, and then got his own cartoon series. There was also an attempt to bring Jimmy Swinnerton's Little Jimmy to the screen, but it wasn't nearly as successful.
  • The 1938 cartoon Sally Swing featured Betty in her last theatrical appearance^note While her series lasted until 1939, all subsequent shorts would only feature her dog, Pudgy presenting the eponymous Sally, a Suspiciously Similar Substitute created for the swing era... but it didn't catch on.
• Blue's Clues added a segment in its final season where Blue travels to a playroom where she becomes a puppet and has new friends. Blue's Room, the show these segments were a pilot for, would premiere on Nickelodeon six months after the first episode with this segment premiered.
• There's a two-part episode of Bravestarr called "Sherlock Holmes in the 23rd Century", which is clearly designed as a backdoor pilot for a potential new series that never entered production because Filmation had fallen upon hard times by this point (Bravestarr ultimately went on to become Filmation's final, fully produced series). This bears no direct relation to the later DIC Entertainment series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, which, like the two-part episode in question, is set in "New London" (Bravestarr is set on the planet of "New Texas").
• Disney produced a CG/hand-drawn animated hybrid movie that served as the pilot to the TV series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, book-ended by the CG characters from Toy Story actually watching the movie in Andy's room.
• Inversion: The Sector V kids from Codename: Kids Next Door were actually supposed to be the supporting characters in a different series pitched by creator Tom Warburton. Cartoon Network saw potential in this group of neighborhood children, and had him create a second pilot alongside "Kenny and the Chimp" that focused purely on them. Viewer response lead to the "Kids Next Door" being chosen over "Kenny", and the rest is history.
• Dora the Explorer:
  • "Meet Diego!" was meant to launch Go, Diego, Go!.
  • "Dora's Christmas Carol" had a scene that was meant to set up the Dora's Explorer Girls spin-off, which later became Dora and Friends: Into the City!. Two other episodes, "School Science Fair" (introducing a young Emma) and "Let's Go To Music School" (introducing a young Kate) also did this. Oddly enough, the latter episode aired in most countries after the spin-off series premiered, with it only airing in the United States several years after both the original series and spin-off had been cancelled.
• DuckTales (1987):
  • The episode where Uncle Scrooge becomes the crime fighting "Masked Mallard". It wasn't originally intended to be this trope, just a one-shot story, but fans and writers liked it so much they started coming up with ideas for a sequel episode. They finally decided there were just too many good ideas that they wanted to do and created Darkwing Duck.
  • The episode "Double-O-Duck", where Launchpad gets mistaken for a James Bond-style secret agent, seems to be the set up for a spin off, though the James Bond right-holders weren't too thrilled with the "Double-O" part. F.O.W.L. (Fiendish Organization for World Larceny), introduced in the episode, became the main villains for Darkwing Duck.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • The third season episode "Let's Get Dangerous" is a double-length episode focusing primarily on Darkwing Duck, as well as establishing Gosalyn and Launchpad McQuack as his crime-fighting partners. The episode was promoted heavily by Disney, even being released for free on YouTube. It was later confirmed they would be rebooting Darkwing for streaming on Disney+ .
  • A later episode is fairly transparently a setup for bringing back the Rescue Rangers.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • The fifth season had an episode where main characters Timmy, Cosmo and Wanda appear purely as a Framing Device for what is actually a pilot for a proposed spin-off, that being a full-length version of the Show Within a Show Crash Nebula. Plans never got off the ground, partly due to the creator was already juggling another series that also happened to be an action show starring a teenage boy learning to be a hero.
  • The episode "Spellementary School" was actually first pitched as a spin-off starring Poof and Foop attending school in order to hone their fairy magic, with the concept being recycled into an episode after it was rejected.
• Fluppy Dogs was intended as a pilot for a television series. The movie was not well-received, and the series was never picked up.
• Gargoyles:
  • The World Tour arc is rife with these, a response to an ultimately failed mandate from Michael Eisner that Gargoyles be used as a launchpad for Disney's own superhero universe instead of purchasing Marvel Comics. There's "The New Olympians", one for... The New Olympians. "Sentinel" is a more subtle predecessor to Gargoyles 2198. Lampshaded in the creator's "ramble" on the episode:
    Greg: The way this ended, you'd almost think we were setting up yet another spin-off. "That wacky alien Nokkar teams up with a doctor and two archeologists to save the world from invasion and learn a little something about getting along... all in one hotel room!"
  • Other episodes set up elements that would lead to spinoffs:
    • "Pendragon", which ends with a resurrected King Arthur heading out to wander the world in search of Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table.
    • "Future Tense" with the Phoenix Gate being thrown into the timestream, setting up "Timedancer" (which also never came to fruition).
    • "Walkabout", "Bushido", "Kingdom" and "The Journey" all have elements that feature in the Gargoyles: Bad Guys series.
• Ghost Rider appeared in backdoor pilots on Fantastic Four: The Animated Series and The Incredible Hulk (1996) for his own cartoon on UPN, which was not picked up. This had the effect of preventing the character from appearing in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, as the Fox execs did not want to promote a character who was going to be used by a rival network.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
  • The Halloween special "Underfist" relegated the show's main trio of characters to cameos in order to focus on five of the show's supporting cast members as they form the titular superhero team. It never got off the ground, with the creator later explaining that the executives interested in the project had left the company while the special was being produced, and the new ones weren't interested.
  • When the show was still known as "Grim & Evil," and featured Evil Con Carne shorts, one episode features the character Max Courage and his family in what was apparently intended to be the pilot for a spin-off that never materialized.
• The last episode of Hong Kong Phooey, "Comedy Cowboys", uses its full half-hour length to introduce a bevy of new characters (Honcho, The Mysterious Maverick and Posse Impossible), all evidently itching to get their own cartoon. (Only one, Posse Impossible, succeeded when it appeared on CB Bears.) Lampshaded in that Phooey does hardly anything in the episode, as they point out at the end.
• The Incredible Hulk appeared in backdoor pilots in both Iron Man: The Animated Series and Fantastic Four: The Animated Series, before being spun off into his own cartoon (which aired on UPN rather than Fox Kids).
• Fan speculation ran rampant that the Justice League Unlimited episode "Far from Home" was designed as a Poorly Disguised Pilot for a Legion of Super-Heroes series that would have starred Supergirl and taken place in DC Animated Universe continuity; however, Bruce Timm denied this. The fact that a Legion cartoon started up the next year, starring Superman, is apparently just a coincidence.
• The Henry and June Show, a half-hour KaBlam! special, was produced in hopes of spinning KaBlam! hosts Henry and June off into their own series and premiered in Summer 1999 (around the same time Nickelodeon started using the duo as hosts for various programming blocks, replacing Stick Stickly). Due to low ratings, the spin-off never happened and the special was never aired again.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: The episode "Back in Red Action" was completely divorced from the setting minus Enid, who went to the future of 301X with Red to assist the Hue Troop (Red's old Power Rangers-esque team of super powered crime fighters) in an adventure. The showrunners really were trying to get a Hue Troop spin off going, but that fell apart due to unknown reasons.
• The Loud House:
  • Halfway through Season 2, Bobby and Ronnie Anne Santiago move from the show's suburban setting to the city to live with their extended family, the Casagrandes. This was a two-part episode where we meet the entire family in what is an obvious way to launch a spin-off... and indeed, Los Casagrandes (later renamed The Casagrandes) was announced the following year.
  • The first five half-hours of Season 4 are even more directly this, revolving around Ronnie Anne, her family and new best friend/neighbor Sid Chang, with the main cast from The Loud House barely appearing, if at all. To make it even more obvious, the show's usual opening sequence was swapped out with one that straight-up has Ronnie Anne ask the viewer to meet her family, and all the episodes have "with the Casagrandes" in their titles.
• The Addams Family's guest appearance on The New Scooby-Doo Movies may have been to test the waters for The Addams Family (1973). Similarly, the episodes featuring Batman and Robin were probably this for Superfriends, especially since the first season featured "Junior Superfriends" consisting of teenagers and their dog.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • The Fireside Girls episodes "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" and "Bee Story" are sometimes seen as this, but are actually companion episodes to their respective "A-episodes."
  • The episode "Doof 101" is so obviously this, with all the focus on Doof, Vanessa and Perry and only a brief glimpse of the title characters, plus the fact that it had its own theme song, no running gags, and an inexplicable subplot about talking bugs.
  • "The OWCA Files" features the same talking bugs and Perry assembling a new team of agents, including Doof. This is particularly obvious as it premiered after the show's Grand Finale.
• The Pixar Short Air Mater actually appears to be this to the spinoff film Planes.
• "Pluto's Judgement Day", despite being labeled as a Mickey Mouse short, is actually one of the first Classic Disney Shorts to focus almost entirely on Pluto.
• Parodied in the Rick and Morty episode "Lawnmower Dog." After Morty's dog, made sentient due to a headset made by Rick, takes other dogs along with him to colonize an alternate universe, Rick starts to talk about how there must be satisfying stories going on in that universe and how he'd watch it for "at least eleven minutes a pop." Doubles as a reference to a failed pitch for a kids' cartoon that co-creator Justin Roiland had before making Rick and Morty, which never got greenlit.
• Rugrats:
  • Zig-zagged with the episode "All Growed Up", which features an odd "vision into the future" where all the characters are 10 years older and have their adventures grounded in something resembling reality, as opposed to the usually surreal and fantastic nature of the exploits of their toddler incarnations. This was originally intended as just a one-off concept, but positive reception towards the idea (especially the fact that the episode remains the most-watched premiere in Nickelodeon history) led to it quickly being transformed into a series, Rugrats: All Grown Up!, which shows the Rugrats as junior high schoolers.
  • Later was the episode "Preschool Daze" which focused on Angelica and Susie's first day of preschool. This too was spun off into Rugrats Preschool Daze following that same formula but with a markedly different art style. Unlike All Grown Up however, it didn't really get anywhere, and only 4 episodes were ever produced.
  • The episode where Susie celebrates Kwanzaa with her family was meant to be this, as it was planned to have a spin-off focusing on Susie and her family moving to Atlanta, Georgia. It never materialized as a result of All Grown Up becoming a thing so that Susie could remain part of the cast.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • Given the theme song is entirely about the Boo Brothers, with Scooby-Doo hardly mentioned, it's hard to believe that Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers wasn't intended as a pilot for a Boo Brothers series.
  • The Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo episode "The Ransom of Scooby Chief" comes off as this, since it focuses mainly on Scrappy and his "gang" (Duke and Annie, two friends of his) rescuing Scooby and Shaggy from two (non-disguised) crooks. The two friends are never seen afterwards.
• In an unusual variant, one of the last episodes of Secret Mountain Fort Awesome was "Uncle Grandpa", starring a completely different cast and only had the main characters as a Framing Device. Eventually, Uncle Grandpa was greenlit for its own series. What makes this interesting is that, similar to the Kenny and the Chimp/Codename Kids Next Door situation above, Uncle Grandpa was the star of the pilot Secret Mountain Fort Awesome was based on, with the Disgustoids only having a brief appearance and were seemingly mindless monsters.
• The Simpsons:
  • The episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" is a backdoor pilot for a Simpsons spinoff called "Tales from Springfield", which would showcase the lives of every character on the show who wasn't a member of The Simpson family. The crew decided it would be too much work, and the idea was abandoned.
  • The concept was parodied in the episode "The Simpsons’ Spin-Off Showcase", which revolves around Three Shorts that were alleged spin-off pilots. The hefty amount of Stylistic Suck and Cliché Storm invoked makes clear that the spin-offs wouldn’t run for long even if they actually existed.
• The Skylanders Academy episode "Crash Landing" features Crash Bandicoot as a special guest star. Here, he is Suddenly Speaking, much more intelligent than normal, and everyone thinks he's extremely cool, especially Spyro, who begins trying to mimic him and essentially becomes his Fan Boy. The idea of Crash getting his own show is outright lampshaded in the episode itself.
  Eruptor: That dude was so cool. I wish we could have gotten to know him better.
  Master Eon: Yes, Eruptor, Crash was quite the aspirational hero whose wacky adventures would make for addictive weekly viewing.
• The "Adventures of Sir Johan and Peewit" episodes in Season 2 of The Smurfs come off as this.^note Indeed, they were treated as a separate series when it was broadcast in Belgium and France. This is the opposite of the original French language comic, where the Smurfs originally appeared in the Johan et Pirlouit album La Flute à Six Trous ("The Flute with Six Holes") before getting their own series. This also explains why the Smurfs take so long to turn up in the movie The Smurfs and the Magic Flute (Or in the original French, "La Flute à Six Schtroumpfs"^note Literally, "The Flute with Six Smurfs".; based on the aforementioned album).
• One episode of Sofia the First has Sofia rescue a princess named Elena. Sure enough, Elena of Avalor made it to television screens later that year, making this one of the most successful examples of this trope. Although this example is interesting as the special that was meant to lead into Elena ended up being delayed to the point where it aired after the Elena series had been airing for a while, making it look like a Required Spinoff Crossover.
• The original Space Ghost series was renewed for a final set of six episodes during the September 1967 season on CBS. Four of these six episodes were actually crossovers with other Hanna-Barbera superheroes (namely Mighty Mightor, The Herculoids, Moby Dick and Shazzan) that just happened to have their shows debuting around the same period on the same network.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series is rife with crossovers with the rest of the Marvel Universe, and the writers have since revealed that the two-parter with Daredevil was meant to launch another series, which ended up not being made. Also the last episode of season 4 really seems like they were trying to start a Prowler TV spinoff.
• Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends also features various episodes where the Power Trio encounters several other Marvel heroes, including the X-Men. Notably, Wolverine uses the same Australian accent he uses on the later Pryde of the X-Men pilot, even though he's Canadian. It was meant to be a backdoor pilot for an X-Men show that never got off the ground, but strangely enough, did not include Wolverine. It would've had Cyclops, Storm, Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Thunderbird and Ms. Marvel (renamed "Lady Lightning") as teenagers attending a public high school rather than the Xavier Institute. The idea was finally successfully used in 2000's X-Men: Evolution.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars had a couple, though it's not as evident as some given the show's anthology-style format.
  • "The Gathering" through "A Necessary Bond" involve Ahsoka meeting a diverse group of young Jedi in training and helping them learn the ropes. It took until Season 2 of Star Wars: The Bad Batch for one of them (Gungi) to get another speaking role in the series, and it's very easy to imagine a TV show around them. One has to wonder if the involved Inferred Holocaust was a factor...
  • "Secret Weapons" through "Point of No Return" is a completely self-contained mini-arc where the only main character to be present is R2, with everyone else being a crew of naturally kid-appealing droids and their commander.
  • Two-thirds of the final season were made up of a pair of backdoor pilots placed back-to-back: "The Bad Batch" through "Unfinished Business" acted as one for a potential show starring the eponymous clone commandos, while "Gone With A Trace" through "Together Again" acted as one for a potential show following the Martez sisters. Dave Filoni had yet to decide what the next Star Wars animated show would be, and so created the two pilot arcs to see which idea would be more popular. The Bad Batch won, though the Martez sisters did get a Day in the Limelight episode within it.
• Street Sharks has an example that's like an odd cross between this and a Retool. It introduces a trio of evil velociraptor-like aliens from outer space in "Ancient Sharkonauts", and introduces their counterparts, the heroic Dino Vengers, in the following episode, "Sharkotic Reaction". The dinosaurs then proceed to stick around for the next six episodes, which, as it turned out, are the FINAL six episodes of the series. The opening title sequence even changed to call the show Dino Vengers Featuring Street Sharks in the original airings. This resulted in the Dino Vengers and raptors, heavily retooled and having cut continuity with Street Sharks, getting their own show the next year: Extreme Dinosaurs.
• Superman: The Animated Series has "In Brightest Day", an episode that focuses primarily on the origin of the Kyle Rayner version of Green Lantern, and does a pretty good job of establishing his mythology and arch-enemy Sinestro. Superman is a secondary character at most, and a victim of The Worf Effect. Ultimately, though, no new GL show came of it and when Justice League came along, John Stewart was used as the team's Green Lantern rather than Kyle. Kyle would not appear again (save for a silent cameo in the Justice League episode "Hereafter") until many years later in the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Return," where it was revealed that he'd been stationed on Oa after the events of "In Brightest Day," thus explaining why John was acting as Earth's Green Lantern instead.
• Tales of Arcadia: One late episode of Trollhunters has Jim and his friends teaming up with Aja and Krel, two "foreign exchange students" who behave very oddly and have a few more minor appearances throughout the rest of the show. This paves the way for the second installment of the trilogy, 3Below, which takes place at the same time as the third season of Trollhunters. In it, Aja and Krel are royal aliens fleeing galactic conflict and posing as humans in Arcadia. Jim and his friends also have A Day in the Limelight in this show along with several minor appearances, with Steve and Eli being the two main overlapping characters.
• Season 6 of Teen Titans Go! had "Beast Boy's That's What's Up" special event that consisted of Beast Boy visiting the Doom Patrol for four episodes, giving each member of the team plenty of development and giving their house and town plenty of detailed background artwork. Further increasing the likelihood that the event's purpose was to serve as a pilot for a spinoff starring the Doom Patrol is the fact that the Doom Patrol live-action show came out that same year.
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • Two episodes of the series focus on Elmyra's previously unseen and unmentioned family. The first one introduces us to Mr. Skullhead, as the subject of Elmyra's imaginary TV show. He went on to become a recurring character in Animaniacs. Although the episodes never got picked up for a series, Elmyra did eventually end up starring in another show, which her family (and even Furrball) are left out of.
  • "The Return of Batduck", which is a homage and tie-in to the 1992 Tim Burton film, Batman Returns, is a pilot for the short-lived spin-off, The Plucky Duck Show, which otherwise wound up airing only as a package of previously-aired Plucky Duck cartoons from Tiny Toons (though some shorts aired on The Plucky Duck Show first).
  • "Fields of Honey" and "Two-Tone Town" are also suspected of being this; the latter even lampshades the show's eventual replacement (with "ACME Oop!", a.k.a Animaniacs).
• Before starting their Little King shorts, Van Beuren Studios made two shorts based on the Little King's companion ("topper") strip, "Sentinel Louie", which were both released as part of their Aesop's Film Fables series of shorts.
  • "Plane Dumb" feels like a prototype for the two Van Beuren Amos 'n' Andy shorts, since the bulk of the cartoon has Tom & Jerry disguised in blackface makeup and acting like the then-popular radio duo. They even talk, often—something they almost never do in previous shorts.
• One episode of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home features a Crossover with Car 54, Where Are You?, introducing Gunther as Erma's brother in law. The episode quickly focuses on the officers trying to find a missing kid, with the Boyles shoved into the background.
  • Wait Till Your Father Gets Home is one of two animated segments of Love, American Style prepared as potential pilots (this was titled "Love And The Old Fashioned Father"). The second, Melvin Danger (as "Love And The Detective"), didn't get past its initial airing on Style.
• Wonder Pets! has an episode featuring Ming-Ming visiting a cousin of hers. It's clearly a poorly disguised pilot for a possible spin-off series with Ming-Ming as the lead character, but it was never made.

---