Times where someone insists "The Show Must Go On!" regardless of setbacks in Live-Action Films.
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: Early on a theater company struggles to put on a Baron Münchausen show due to the Turkish invasion that is going on outside. On a meta sense it's Harsher in Hindsight given how it reflects the Troubled Production that Terry Gilliam had to endure while making the movie.
- The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother: Sigerson Holmes and Professor Moriarty (and their minions) engage in a secret contest behind the scenes of an opera performance to get some important papers. Their shenanigans include dropping sleeping pills into the cups the actors are drinking from, firing guns and breaking into song: the actors try desperately to keep the opera going despite the interruptions.
- Bem Bom: Lena's mother dies just before a show. Tozé wants to hide it from her so it doesn't affect her performance, but she overhears it and runs out onto the street to cry, with her bandmates following to comfort her. The show still happens and she gives it her all.
- Beware of the Car: Yuri is both a member of an amateur acting troupe, and an amateur car thief. What's more, Maxim, the detective who finally catches him, is a member of the same acting troupe. Eventually Yuri gets arrested, but Maxim has him taken to the theater, under police guard, so that the acting troupe can put on their production of Hamlet.
- Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance): Riggan gets locked outside the theater and his robe stuck on the door. In order to make it to his part in the play, he had to walk around Times Square in his underwear. Once he finally reaches inside the theater, he delivers his lines while in his underwear. The audience find it hilarious and his stint on Times Square becomes viral on the internet.
- Black and Tan: "Keep the show on!", cries the MC after Fredi has a heart attack while dancing onstage. He hustles the dancing girls onstage, but the curtain falls soon after anyway.
- Galaxy Quest:Jason Nesmith: You will go out there.
Alexander Dane: I won't. And nothing you can say will make me.
Jason Nesmith: "The show must go on."
Alexander Dane: (Beat) Damn you. Damn you! - The Greatest Showman: A more positive version happens at the end, when Barnum grants Philip control of the circus so that he can spend more time with his family.Phillip: What will you be doing?
Barnum: Watching my girls grow up. The show must go on. - Henry's Crime: Henry goes back on stage and continues his role as if nothing's wrong, immediately after getting shot in the leg. Justified because if he hadn't, it would have aroused suspicion.
- A League of Their Own: A Western Union delivery man shows up at the door of the locker room right before a game with a telegram for Betty informing her that her husband was killed in action in World War II. After the team chaperon takes her aside, Jimmy has to get the rest of the team to focus.Jimmy: [softly] Alright, we've still got a game to play.
- Meet the Feebles: More and more of the muppet-like variety show's cast and crew end up missing, incapacitated, or dead on the night of their live TV debut, but the show lurches on even when performers accidentally die on stage. By the end the director is reduced to performing a musical number that he was expressly forbidden ever to do, ever, under an circumstances by the producer.
- Midway (2019). John Ford is filming on Midway Island when the base comes under air attack. Despite being urged to get to an air raid shelter, he and his cameraman set up on an exposed vantage point and start filming until Ford is injured by a bomb blast. Ford's response when his cameraman goes to help him? "Keep rolling!"
- Moulin Rouge!: Satine is dying from tuberculosis and everyone's hopes and dreams are falling apart, but they still manage to stage "Spectacular! Spectacular!" Guess what The Song Before the Storm is?
- The Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera where the brothers throw an opera into total chaos and the theatre crew and police still bend over backwards to avoid disrupting the show themselves, even when things are bad enough that logically they might as well simply and openly march out on stage to grab the brothers since it would not make any difference.
- In Quick, Ki-su delivers Chun-shim to the OK Girls concert just in time where she performs in the explosive-laden crash helmet; to the confusion of the other group members and causing many problems with the choreography.
- Rock Star: In the very beginning of the first song in his first concert with Steel Dragon, Chris Cole slips and falls down the stairs (they were tring to do a Grand Staircase Entrance). Despite a nasty head wound and possible concussion, Chris rallies and finishes the song and the concert.
- Shakespeare in Love:
- Lampshaded, as the movie is apparently set before the phrase was popularized:Henslowe: The show must... you know...
William Shakespeare: [prompting him to continue] Go on! - And played straight when, after the Rose Theater is ordered shut down by the Master of the Revels, rival theater manager Richard Burbage freely allows Shakespeare's company the use of his theater for the premiere of Romeo and Juliet.
- Lampshaded, as the movie is apparently set before the phrase was popularized:
- The Dresser:
- Everything goes wrong in this production of King Lear. The star has lost his mind, the cast is about to mutiny and the Blitz is shaking dust from the rafters. Thankfully Ian Mc Kellan is here to help.
- Singin' in the Rain:
- Cosmo invokes this trope for Don Lockwood before breaking into "Make 'Em Laugh
".
Cosmo: "Come on now, snap out of it. You can't let a little thing like this get you down. Why, you're Don Lockwood, aren't you? And Don Lockwood's an actor, isn't he? Well, what's the first thing an actor learns? "The show must go on!" Come rain, come snow, come sleet, the show must go on!"- Turning the terrible movie "The Dueling Cavalier" into a musical ("The Dancing Cavalier") also qualifies for this trope.
- Cosmo invokes this trope for Don Lockwood before breaking into "Make 'Em Laugh
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze: Vanilla Ice's musical performance is interrupted by an actual mutant fight. Ice and his band improvise a song to convince the crowd this is a floor show and thus avert a panic as well.
- A more tragic case in Stage Door; on opening night of her debut, Terry finds out Kay, an actress she was friends with, had her heart set on the part Terry was about to play, and when she didn't get the part, committed suicide. Upon hearing this, Terry is heartbroken and refuses to go on; Ann Luther, her acting coach, gives a variation of this speech to get Terry to perform.
- Topsy-Turvy opens with Arthur Sullivan suffering from painful kidney disease, only to pull himself out of bed and stagger off to the theatre to conduct the orchestra for the premiere of Princess Ida.
