The Rule of Three in western animation.
- Abby Hatcher: Abby and Bozzly's Fuzzly troubles normally take three attempts to solve; they often fail on the first two tries, but succeed on the third.
- In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius episode "Krunch Time", Jimmy prepares three batches of his homemade candy before he perfects it. The first batch Carl and Sheen like for a few seconds before it goes bad and they spit it into the garbage, the second batch causes them to spontaneously grow facial hair, and the third batch explodes.
- Animaniacs:
- In a short: "Tea? Coffee? Monster?"
- Another example: Slappy is eulogizing her archfoe Walter Wolf, who was faking the funeral to 'get' her. According to Slappy, Walter was a firm believer in this rule, including three bombs that were found lying around to blow her up. 'I'm sure he'd want to be buried with it.'
- Used in most, if not almost all, episodes of The Backyardigans. For example, in the James Bond parody episode, Pablo must protect three secret containers from Uniqua.
- Blaze and the Monster Machines makes big usages of this trope in every episode:
- There are three major problems Blaze and AJ have to solve on their adventure, and for each one, either there are three parts to the problem, or they take three attempts to solve it, by failing on the first two and succeeding on the third.
- Blaze’s Once per Episode Transformation Sequence requires three parts, though there are some exceptions which require two, and in two early episodes, four. His and Zeg’s insect transformations in “The Big Ant-venture” also required only one part each.
- Crusher’s occasional subplot shows up three times in an episode, with the third usually being the episode’s last scene before the credits.
- For any episode that features a Fetch Quest, there are three items needed to be found throughout the trip while visiting the usual three places.
- Blue's Clues always uses three clues to solve the episodes' puzzle. It's even in the song.
- In Central Park, Season 1 "Dog Spray Afternoon", when Paige realizes that someone is giving the mayor a huge sum of money by disguising it through buying real estate from the mayor himself, she investigates three real estates to see if it's worth the money and during her investigation she spills her coffee on herself. The third and final real estate she investigates looks completely run down which is proof enough to see it's a real estate scam, and instead of spilling her coffee on herself, she drinks it and finds it cold.
- The Critic uses the same joke in this case: To prove to Jay that he's being repetitive, his boss Duke shows him a video of him hosting his show Coming Attractions, but with the screen split into thirds.
Jay: (section 1, from 1988) Rain Man (section 2, from 1992) A Few Good Men (section 3, from 1993) The Firm (all together) is the latest stinker from Tom Cruise. He doesn't act anymore, he's on ... Cruise Control! AAAAAAHAHAHA! AAAAAAHA! I JUST ... I JUST! MADE THAT! UP! - In The Crumpets episode "Les sur-vivants", when the gang are in the woods during an apparent viral Zombie Apocalypse, group leader Triceps speaks about three steps for survival, but she initially refused to reveal the third one because it isn't time yet. Once the twins Bother and Blister ask her what their roles are, she gives them step three, which is having no choice but winning the battle. Caprice, Cassandra and Scene Transition quotes would mention the third step during high-tension situations, such as the former two confronting a hallucinating Triceps.
- In Dora the Explorer, there are usually three places that the characters have to go in each episode, with the exception of certain double-length installments. Also, saying Swiper, No Swiping! three times stops Swiper, though if the characters aren't able to manage it in time, then he declares that they're too late and swipes.
- Lampshaded in an episode of Drawn Together, when Wooldoor describes what his television show will do. In his words, it will "Entertain kids, annoy adults, and funny third thing!"
- Lampshaded and subverted in Duckman. While looking for suspects at a nightclub, Duckman says "Something bugs me. He's the third suspicious character we've talked to, and the third one is always guilty". The lights go out, shots are heard and when it's over the suspect is dead on the floor. Cornfed observes "So much for the Rule Of Three."
- Averted on Extreme Ghostbusters. "On the count of three." "Three!"
- On The Fairly OddParents!, an episode's Running Gag is used three times. Also, in the Wishology trilogy, three wands were eventually needed to defeat The Darkness.
- Family Guy uses this trope liberally for their gags. DVD Commentary also states the trope name for when a comedy uses a gag that involves three things.
- In one particular example, the gag of Carter making Peter perform painful or embarrassing acts for his amusement in exchange for the former's help was spread out across multiple episodes: In "Model Misbehavior", he has to eat a pinecone; in "Peterotica", Carter make him reach into a jar of barbed wire and salt to get the money at the bottom; and in "No Chris Left Behind", he has to star in a shot-for-shot remake of Liar Liar.
- In one episode of Freakazoid!, the eponymous character is picked up by a holographic pterodactyl and dropped from an extreme height, and he screams for help every time he falls. Lampshaded the third time when he and the Lobe fall together:The Lobe: Freakazoid, why is it taking us so long to fall?
Freakazoid: Cuz it's funny!
The Lobe: No it's not, it's just stupid! It's as dumb as that Handman episode!- Examples from Speak of the Devil include the Freakazoid! "Huggbees", Beetlejuice.
- In Futurama: One spoonful calms you down, two spoonfuls help you sleep, but three spoonfuls, you'll go into a sleep and never wake up! Never!"Oh Fry... I love you more than the moon and the stars and the POETIC IMAGE NUMBER 37 NOT FOUND"
Joey: He's flashin' his cash loaf again.
Donbot: How many times is that? Two or three?
Clamps: Three.
Donbot: All right. That's the necessary number of times. - In one episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Harvey keeps waking up to find the heads of Hanna-Barbera characters at the foot of his bed à la The Godfather: First it's Quick Draw McGraw, then an apparently still-alive Jabberjaw, then what is either Gleep or Gloop.
- Hazbin Hotel:
- In "That's Entertainment", Vaggie tells Charlie not to sing during her news segment three times when they chat about it backstage. It doesn't get through to her, because Charlie eventually breaks into song anyway.
- In "Welcome to Heaven", Sir Pentious attempts to hit it off with Cherri three times in the club. The first two times has him trying to offer her a drink only to anxiously backpedal by saying that he's actually buying drinks for everyone. The third time around, the dork notes that the club has a sex room and asks her if she would want to "do a sex" with him. When Cherri asks why would they have sex, Pentious puts his metaphorical foot in his mouth by saying it's because he's having sex with everyone in the club. Cue him then being dragged by other patrons into the sex room.
- The Hollow: Turns out each group can only use three portals, and Kai ends up using their last ones.
- The alien invasion in episode 2 of Invincible (2021) come from a dimension where time is faster than ours and so they begin to age rapidly. The first 2 times they retreat when they start to suffer from the different time-streams with the third time they arrive completely immune and with weaponry too advanced for the Teen Team to handle. It takes Omni-Man being accidentally transported to that dimension and committing a literal genocide to end the invasion once and for all.
- Kaeloo: In "Let's Play Guess Who!", Bad Kaeloo beats Mr. Cat up three times. As it is about to happen the third time, Mr. Cat even lampshades how it had to be done three times.
- In The Little Rascals short "The Zero Hero", Spanky's attempt at Engineered Heroics for Alfalfa entails Spanky, Buckwheat and Porky posing as three escaped bank robbers.
- In The Magic Roundabout CGI series episode "Follow That Piano", Florence's piano somehow rolls its way from Ermintrude's tower back to Florence's house thrice throughout the episode. On the third time that the piano rolls back to her house and saw it happen with her own eyes, Florence realises it was Zebedee's doing and calls him over where she chastises him for magically making her piano roll back to her house.
- In the Milo Murphy's Law episode "The Race", Milo attempts to grab a cup of water from a table provided for competitors in the eponymous race. Due to Murphy's Law, the first cup he grabs has the water fall through the bottom, the second gets stolen by a bird, and when he tries to grab a third, the whole table collapses.
- Mira, Royal Detective: In each episode, Mira usually finds three major clues to the mystery of the day before thinking things through.
- Molly of Denali: In "Puppy Sitting," Trini is told that training a lead sled dog takes three things: practice, practice, and practice.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Each of the mane ponies' cutie marks have something to do with the number three. Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie have three apples, gems, butterflies and balloons as their cutie marks respectively. The lightning bolt on Rainbow Dash's cutie mark is composed of three colors.
- Also, all of the lead characters barring Twilight Sparkle have exactly three syllables in their names.
- Also applies to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. There are three of them, and all three have names that consist of three syllables.
- There are three types of ponies (Earth ponies, Unicorns and Pegasi), and both the mane cast and the Cutie Mark Crusaders are made up of an even balance between these types. With the two groups combined, there are three of each.
- Story-wise, many episodes rely on a minimum of three ponies regardless of how many are the actual focus characters — "Look Before You Sleep", based around Applejack and Rarity, adds Twilight Sparkle to the mix, and "Putting your Hoof Down" has Rarity and Pinkie Pie in a Fluttershy ep. This often ties in with the concept of the Freudian Trio, especially in Season 1 episodes where Twilight Sparkle usually acted as the Ego (such as "look before you sleep" where Applejack was the Id and Rarity was the Superego). The show likes to invert the freudian trio a lot too, where the central character's behavior is out of balance and two other characters will try to correct them.
- In "Inspiration Manifestation", Spike's description of Rarity's first puppet theater, lampshaded with Spike counting to three on his claw afterward.Spike: So that puppeteer didn't like your exquisitely crafted best puppet theater in the history of puppet theaters puppet theater.
- Averted in "Pinkie Apple Pie" with a Running Gag of eagle showing up randomly and taking animals offscreen to their doom.
- The Owl House: In the episode "Labyrinth Runners", there are three instances of a character calming another character down using a breathing exercise. In the opening, Willow teaches the exercise to Gus to pull him out of a guilt-spiral and stop his Power Incontinence. Mid-way through, Gus teaches the exercise to Hunter, who had a massive panic attack after learning that Belos has sent out search parties to look for him. In the climax, Hunter tries to use the exercise on Gus when Graye's meddling causes his powers to spiral completely out of control, but because of Hunter's tooth gap and the fact that he doesn't quite remember how the exercise goes, it sounds more like he's trying to whistle through an asthma attack, which makes Gus laugh and breaks the spell.
- Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero: In "3 Big Problems", one of the missiles that Rippen launches at the heroes crushes three buildings, the third of which is named "Rule of 3".
- Combined with Inherently Funny Words in The PJs. Thurgood is working on a stand-up act and the book he got on how to be funny says things in three are funny as well as words with a hard k in them (like knish, tukas, fakakta). He logically assumes then that the funniest thing ever is KKK.
- Planet Sketch: The "Only Joking", "Ira and Lyra", "Bill and Phil", and "Sara Swapsy" sketches were presented in three skits per episode.
- The Powerpuff Girls has the three main protagonists Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup.
- A Pup Named Scooby-Doo: In the episode "The Story Stick", Velma finds a clue on the ground and exclaims, "Jinkies!", but the gang doesn't hear her as they continue looking around for clues. She clears her voice and repeats, "Jinkies!", but again nobody hears her. Then she pulls out a megaphone and shouts, "I. SAID. JINKIES!", and only then do they all turn around while Daphne replies, "Oh sorry Velma."
- In the Ready Jet Go! episode “My Three Suns”, the kids have three daymares as to what it would be like to live on a planet with 3 suns.
- Robot Chicken:
- The DC Comics special. Bane repeatedly turns up suddenly and breaks Batman's back, followed by a hilarious music sting. (Dumdedum dum dee THAT'S BANE!) He does this the expected three times... then a fourth, to which Batman screams "RULE OF THREE, ASSHOLE, NOT RULE OF FOUR!"
- In one sketch, a boy is hospitalized three times whenever he goes onto a road to retrieve a soccer ball and gets hit by a car each time. The first time he's left mute, then he becomes deaf, then he just gets brain damage.
- One sketch has an inventor building a time machine with the intention of going back to see the dinosaurs. Instead, he ends up getting sent back to the presidential assassinations of Lincoln and JFK, then the attempted assassination of Reagan, and ends up getting shot himself each time. On the fourth attempt, he goes back and sees a T. rex... who pulls out a handgun and shoots him again.
- A sketch in the Born Again Virgin Christmas Special is comprised of a spelling bee where a bunch of kids try to spell "Hanukkah" and keep failing. At the end, on-screen text explains that there are over 275 ways to spell the name of the holiday, and itself fails to spell it right three times before giving up and settling on "Jewish Christmas."
- Schoolhouse Rock!'s first song was about the three times tables. Hilariously, it was called "Three Is a Magic Number". It was full of all kinds of examples.
- The Simpsons: Lampshaded by Krusty the Clown reading an online recap of his TV show."Monologue seemed endless, pie clearly hits face of stunt double, overuse of comedic rule of three?"
- South Park:
- Kenny died three times in the episodes "Pinkeye" and "Coon vs. Coon & Friends."
- "Biggie Smalls. Biggie Smalls. Biggie Smalls."
- South Park also did it in the Imaginationland episode:"Sir, we have a security breach!"
"What?!"
"There's an Unauthorized Entry Alert! It's coming from Sector Two!"
"Sector Two??" - Cartman then jumps in through a window. The second time the above dialogue occurs, Cartman again jumps in through the shoddily repaired window. The third time it happens, Kyle jumps in through the remnants of the window, causing the general to exclaim, "Why is it so easy for children to break into the Pentagon?!"
- Also in the episode "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow" after Stan, Kyle, and Cartman leave, Randy volunteers to go after them, whereupon he is told "You can't go, you'll freeze to death!" whereupon Gerald volunteers to go, and is told "You can't go, you'll freeze to death!". Cue a third random person volunteering and a third random person reluctantly saying "You can't go, you'll freeze to death."
- On Special Agent Oso, the problem a child is having in any particular story can be solved in "Three Simple Steps." That said, sometimes a particular step will have more than one thing in it, such as the second step of taking care of a cut from a thorn in "Redfinger" being to dry off your hands that you just washed and then dab antibiotic ointment on the cut.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Deal No Deal", Trace Martez makes three mistakes that highlight her Naïve Newcomer status. The first is when she accidentally flies into a military air lane on Coruscant, the second is when she leaves the air brakes on in hyperspace, and the third and most dangerous mistake is when she panics and dumps the spice they're transporting into hyperspace.
- Steven Universe: Discussed in "Bismuth". After a second "Bismuth/business" pun, Amethyst complains that they already did that joke, to which Steven points out that the third time it happens it'll be really funny. It does happen a third time, and it's not funny at all.
- In Thomas & Friends, From season 8 onward (Sharon Miller's tenure as head writer), almost all plots follow this, where a character must make one mistake three times in a row before realizing what they did wrong, and then things get Anvilicious. Many fans have referred to this as the "Three-Strike Formula". This got toned down by Season 17, when Andrew Brenner took over as the head writer, but slowly returned in Season 22.
- In one Tiny Toon Adventures short, a clown runs by in the background three times. After the third and final time near the end of the cartoon, Babs dryly explains he's "a Running Gag". The plot of the episode is about Buster's quest to revive a joke he's driven into the ground (represented by a clown in a grave...morbid). The joke has this trope too: "A duck, a rabbit, and a pig go to a restaurant..."note
- In Transformers: Armada, there are three legendarily strong weapons formed by the combination of three Mini-Cons apiece... Caused partly by the Merchandise-Driven nature of the series, as Mini-Cons were sold in teams of three. Also, the Mini-Cons added a third unique group of Transformers alongside the Autobots and Decepticons — as witness their unique emblem.
- Triple Threat — Rail Racer! And the original Triple-Changers came in sets of 3, and the Unicron Trilogy (and Headmasters) tended to have 3-kid sidekick teams. Transformers is _mostly_ based around the number 2, though.
- The Trollhunter from Trollhunters lives and dies by three rules:
- Rule #1: Always be Afraid.
- Rule #2: Always finish the fight.
- Rule #3: When in doubt, always kick them in the gronk-nuks.
- Winx Club:
- Fairies normally attend Alfea for three semesters.
- The Crystal Labyrinth in the third season forced three of the Winx with sacrifices: Tecna had to give up her emotions, Stella her beauty, and Musa the chance to see her deceased mother.
- In the fourth season, there are three eternal fairies that give the girls the three gifts of destiny.
- In the fifth season, the Winx have to find three gems and pass the tests that come with it as part of the quest to obtain the Sirenix transformation.
- Wish Kid: To trigger the glove's wish-granting power, the user must punch it three times. Nick usually says his wish once for each time he hits the glove but it's revealed in at least two episodes that what really matters is the wish mentioned during the third time. Mrs. Opal must have figured the rule of three is somehow a part of how the glove works as she once tried to become Miss America by stating her wish three times with the glove on her head.
- Work It Out Wombats!: In "Bake It Til You Make It," Zeke and Louisa are making mud pies. According to Louisa, in order for a mud pie to be perfect, it must fit three criteria: be round like a wheel, it must not fall apart into tiny pieces, and it must stick together.
- Yogi's Gang: In "Mr. Fibber", there are three times when Yogi is asked to land because of some emergency. He initially refuses during the third time because the first two turned out to be lies.Yogi Bear: You fooled me twice. Three times isn't nice!
