Short Run in Peru

New episodes of television shows aren't aired in the same day or even week everywhere over the world. Obviously, new episodes of an anime are going to be out in Japan before they're shown in the United States due to dubbing. Shows made in the United States are, quite obviously, usually shown in the United States before they're shown in another country. It only makes sense that a show will be shown first in the country that made it.

However, an odd trend is that, although they were made in one country, the people in another country see new episodes first, which seems extremely counter-intuitive, at least to the viewers of the country of origin. Usually it's a US-based show that's shown first in Canada, Latin America, Australia, or the UK.

The reason is that, once they've paid for them, licensees/networks in those countries have complete control over when they want to air the episodes, and they just happen to air them earlier than the original country's station does.

With the advent of file sharing networks and sites like Youtube, this often results in anxious viewers in the original country seeing episodes weeks or even months before they're ever aired. With the advent of global services like Netflix, worldwide rollout of an entire season can happen in less than a week. Increasingly (and hopefully) this trope is becoming a thing of the past.

Compare No Export for You, where foreign countries never see the work at all.

General

 * Happens a lot with US shows who are cancelled before airing all the episodes—since the foreign networks buy the whole season, they show the whole season. This was the case with Invader Zim, Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls and pretty much every show cancelled before showing the whole season.
 * Also Pushing Daisies which like Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls was created by Bryan Fuller.

Anime

 * Teknoman, the English-language adaptation of Tekkaman Blade, had its entire run air in Australia before it premiered in the US (which only ended up screening about half the series).
 * It was also a different dub that had the main character keep his original name, and is generaly seen to be closer to the original, and did not tell the entire backstory in the opening credits either. This is the version used for the DVD release.
 * The anime Afro Samurai, was, due to its themes, animated in English with American voice actors (by a Japanese studio); as such, it was picked up by Spike TV before its subtitled Japanese broadcast.
 * The Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monsters miniseries first aired on RTÉ Two in Ireland. US fans didn't even know about it until after the second episode had aired. Their run of Pokémon also overtook other countries (including the US) for a while back in 2000.
 * RTÉ airs quite a few US shows very early, at least before the UK. This is due to licensing being much cheaper for such a small country like Ireland, and trying to beat competition from UK channels which are easily available on cable and satellite (or terrestrially if you're near the border or south east coast).
 * The movie to the second Yu-Gi-Oh!! series was not aired in Japan until after it had already been released in the rest of the world for over a year.
 * The dub of Sailor Moon had this happen when the final 17 episodes of R were finally dubbed. Because of the show's success in Canada, there was no trouble getting YTV to air them, but for whatever reason, getting them into syndication in the United States took years. Meanwhile, they were still constantly rerunning the first 65 dubbed episodes that ended on a cliffhanger during the Black Moon Arc because of the missing end of that plotline.
 * Samurai Pizza Cats is an interesting case. While a grand total of 52 episodes of the series were dubbed, Canada (which got the show first) had four dubbed episodes pulled from the package. When the show resurfaced many years later in America, these four episodes were included but twelve different episodes were missing instead. Nobody knows why any of these episodes were pulled—fans have often speculated on censorship, but since they were already dubbed and censored anyway, this argument makes no logical sense.
 * One Piece seems to be heading in this direction with the FUNimation Dub in Australia; the dub first premiered on American Cartoon Network taking off from where the 4Kids! dub ended, but was canceled after about six months, so we'll have to wait until the DVD releases get back there from the very beginning to get any further. However the entire season, which had 28 more episodes, was already dubbed, so when Australia didn't cancel it at the same point they were airing a bunch of dubbed episodes there first.
 * IGPX was aired in English in the United States on Toonami one day before before being aired in Japan due to it being co-produced by Toonami. Japan had the entire 2nd season air before the US saw its release though.
 * Transformers Armada aired in America about five months before Japan; unfortunately, this was due to the translators having to work with unfinished episodes, resulting in distinctly sub-par animation and occasionally strange dialogue.
 * Red Line was part of the 2010 Madman Entertainment's Reel Anime Festival, with a limited cinema run in early September, several weeks before its Japanese cinema debut.
 * The second season of the Cyborg 009 2001 series was aired in Latin-America more than a year before the US did the same.
 * The Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon anime special aired in the US first, despite being specifically made for the tenth anniversary of the games' Japanese release. Since the other episodes of the anime were aired in their original order in the US, the special actually aired an entire year before it would normally air.
 * Possibly a Justified Trope, as Pokémon USA used the special to test out the new voice actors that would be replacing the 4Kids actors the following year.
 * And then there's Pokémon Chronicles. While it was a compilation of episodes that had previously aired in Japan (3 1/2 years previously in the case of the opening three-parter), the series debuted in the UK a whole year before US audiences saw it, with Canada picking it up not long after the UK. The US promos still called it a world premiere.
 * The UK has a regular history of jumping ahead of the US for a few episodes, then falling far behind. In the same year as Chronicles, Advanced Battle had the Spoiler Opening edited to cover up Pokémon that weren't supposed to be shown outside Japan yet an episode later than in the US airing due to scheduling. And in a massive case of timing, it came out that Kids WB would be skipping three episodes (later turned out to be delayed by two months) right as the third of those episodes was airing in the UK.
 * The Gantz movie got a theatrical release in the US a few days before it opened in its native Japan.

Film

 * The Phantom Menace was shown on television in about 16 other countries around the world up to 2 months before it was released in the US.
 * Taken was released in America several months after it was in the UK (And a full year after France).
 * The American indie horror film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was released in Britain in 2008... and has not been released at all in America. Worse, due to the rights to the film's American distribution existing in a legal limbo, it remains doubtful if the film will ever see the light of day in its home country.
 * Zyzzyx Road is famous for having the lowest box office record (a little over $80) as it was intended for DVD but was released briefly in two Texas theaters to meet union contract requirements.
 * Actually, the box office was $30, with $10 being refunded to the parents of one actress who paid to see it. And the main reason of the short release (one show a day for seven days in a single cinema) was because the director was aiming for international release (not internal DVD), but wasnt allowed to before releasing it at the USA.
 * The 2011 film of Jane Eyre was a UK production, but its UK cinema release was 6 months after most countries, and it was already on DVD and Blu-ray by the time the UK saw it.
 * The Adventures of Tintin was released in European countries in Fall 2011, and was one of the most popular movies of the year over there, but it didn't hit American theaters until December, and it bombed there. Probably due to the fact that while Tintin is one of the most successful and well-known franchises in Europe, it's not widely read in America.
 * A few of Jean-Claude Van Damme's movies were released first in Brazil, where he's really popular.

Literature

 * Due to production delay of the anthology it's been written for, Lois McMaster Bujold's novella Winterfair Gifts was first published in Croatia, rather than in the US.
 * I Am Not a Serial Killer was written by the American author Dan Wells, but it debuted in the UK before being published in the United States.
 * Ditto Mr. Monster, his second book.

Live Action TV

 * Seemingly by serendipity, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is the Trope Namer for this, in story. Marenghi, the fictitious "creator" of the show, mentions that, although the show was never broadcast in its native land of Britain when first produced in The Eighties, it did have "a short run in Peru".
 * This happened with the first season of the new Battlestar Galactica, which was co-produced by the Sci-Fi Channel and B Sky B. By the time the series premiered in the US, all but the final episode had already aired in the UK. Series creators Ron Moore and David Eick went to far as to post a plea on the show's official message board asking American fans not to download the episodes before they aired in the US (what an oddly specific request).
 * Something similar happened with season 3 of Stargate Atlantis and Season 10 of Stargate SG-1. The first half and the second half were separated in the US by a few months. The UK had them in one go. This resulted in the latter's show finale, "Unending" being shown in the UK about two months before the US.
 * Episodes of the US soap The Young and The Restless air one day before in Canada before they do in the US.
 * The 20th Anniversary TV Special of Doctor Who, "The Five Doctors", aired on a collection of PBS affiliates in the US before it aired in the UK. This is because the BBC decided to delay the special to Children in Need night 1983 - November 25; whereas the PBS stations just went ahead and aired it on the actual anniversary, November 23.
 * Seems to be a trend in recent seasons of Power Rangers, with the UK airing the season finale before the US.
 * A noted example is the Power Rangers SPD episode "Wormhole", the second part of the Crossover with Power Rangers Dino Thunder, which accidentally aired in Canada before the first part even aired in the US.
 * Episodes 12 and 13 of Power Rangers Samurai aired in France first before airing in the US.
 * Farscape was co-produced by Australia's Channel Nine, but took a while to get here. At least they didn't all have accents.
 * A number of second season episodes of LazyTown have never aired in the US, most of them airing first in the UK or Canada, though two aired first in Australia. This is presumably due to an attempted Screwed by the Network in the US, but the network forgetting that the show is neither under their control nor dependant on the American market (the next season was commissioned by The BBC, and is currently in post-production), and it continues to be a success in the rest of the world. In a better example of this trope, it is consistently released in a number of English-speaking markets before it is dubbed for showing in Iceland, its actual country of production.
 * It's crossed the pond the other way too. Red Dwarf's eighth season took eight weeks to air all eight episodes in the UK, but when it was shipped to the US for broadcast, most of the PBS affiliates who picked it up aired the whole thing in two nights.
 * In the US, South of Nowhere had its Season 3B premiere pushed back from May to October 2008. However, it appears that France did not have the mid-season break that the US uses, meaning that the series (which was filmed between seasons) aired in its entirety there.
 * Babylon 5 aired in the US amid the then-usual reruns. In a variation, the UK did not show the reruns, and thus were always ahead. They finished every season several episodes before the US did, making this a partial example of Short Run in Peru.
 * The final three episodes of Pushing Daisies aired in the UK before they did in the US, although apparently they aired (with English audio available) in Italy before either.
 * In an odd inversion, recent seasons of Degrassi: The Next Generation have seen some episodes airing in the US before they air in Canada. So far, episodes 6-1 through 6-8, 7-1 through 7-12, and 8-2 through 8-7 have aired in the US first, as have three of the four specials (one of which has no set air date in Canada, oddly enough).
 * Beyond The Break suffered this hard with season 3, which didn't even start in the US until June 2009 (at which point the entire season was aired in the span of three weeks, with new episodes premiering Mondays through Thursdays), over a year after they'd aired in Canada.
 * Brazil aired Kamen Rider Dragon Knight beyond episode 15 where it was held in the US on a hiatus.
 * Either some of the UK fans are messing with the US fans, or recent episodes of MythBusters are being aired in the UK before their US premiere. This troper has seen posted reviews of two episodes that haven't aired here yet.
 * For some reason, Kingdom season 3 aired in Belgium six months before airing in the UK. Why? Why Belgium of all places? Nobody knows.
 * Season 6 of The Shield started airing in France (with no changes other than the opening credits being in French) right before it starting airing in the US, and the French run saw two new episodes shown each week, so France quickly jumped way ahead of the US. As you might expect, the French broadcasts proved to be very popular on torrent sites.
 * The initial broadcasts of Stargate SG-1 air in America ahead of the UK, but when the North American showing has a mid-season hiatus the UK showings catch up, as they air continue airing the episodes in one go.
 * By 1985, both the CTV network and the Ottawa local affiliate that made the show had cancelled You Can't Do That on Television; Nickelodeon paid the station to keep making new episodes as it was their breakout hit at the time. The middle seasons remained unseen in Canada until YTV was created in the late '80s.
 * Series 2 of Law and Order UK aired in Canada almost a half year before the UK. The same has also happened in regards to Series 4.
 * Due to time zone differences, WWE Smackdown is aired in Australia, the Philippines, India, the UK and Ireland before it reaches the US. It also previously aired a day earlier in Canada.
 * The final five episodes of the canceled series Caprica were broadcast in Canada months ahead of anywhere else.
 * The final eight episodes of Bear in the Big Blue House aired in a number of non-U.S. markets for around three years before finally being seen in the U.S. on Playhouse Disney in 2006.
 * New episodes of Murdoch Mysteries air about a month earlier in the UK than in Canada.
 * This has happened to three different Gerry Anderson series. Several episodes of Space: 1999 made their debut in either the US or Australia before airing in the UK (though not in Italy, even though the series was partly financed by RAI) and a number of episodes of Terrahawks were shown in the US and/or Japan before their British screenings, but the champ in the Anderson canon is Space Precinct—the entire series was shown in America before Britain!
 * Happened to H₂O: Just Add Water. The third season was aired in the U.K. before being aired in its native Australia, and wasn't aired at all in the U.S.
 * Eventually Teen Nick aired third-season episodes of H₂O: Just Add Water in 2012. But now, the entire series is available on Netflix.
 * The third season of Primeval aired one and sometimes even two episodes in advance in Spain compared to the UK.

Video Games

 * No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle was released in America in January 2010, and was released in Europe in April and in Japan in late October.
 * Advance Wars was originally intended to be a minor example of this, it being released in the US shortly before the Japanese release in October 2001. It was pushed back after 9/11 and wasn't released until 2004 in a compilation pack with its sequel, long after most other territories got them.
 * The Japanese release of Days of Ruin was delayed several times before being cancelled: so this Japanese-developed game never got released in its own country.
 * MadWorld was developed by Japanese company Platinum Games and released in America and Europe in March 2009. Due to its graphic violence, however, Sega refused to release it in Japan; it eventually reached Japan eleven months later, published by Spike.
 * The first Rock Band game was released in America in late 2007, but didn't see a European release until nearly a year later.
 * Klonoa Advance 2: Dream Champ Tournament was released in Japan in 2002, and 2005 in America.

Western Animation

 * In Danny Phantom, after airing the "season premiere" (actually the sixth episode) for season 3 in the United States, Nickelodeon apparently forgot it existed, and didn't get around to actually airing the rest of the season until almost a year later. By the time they actually got around to doing it, the entire season has been played in Latin America and the UK months ago.
 * The third season of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Due to episodes airing in a foreign country several months before Nickelodeon actually aired them in the US, plot twists were all-too-often known ahead of schedule.
 * And half of them were prematurely released on DVD, making a large chunk of Nickelodeon's "Countdown to the Comet" event pointless even if you DIDN'T pirate the episodes off the Internet.
 * Nicktoons in general have had this problem since around 2000:
 * A Rugrats ep that was supposed to premiere in 2002 didn't air until 2004 (even stories that had been dependent on said episode aired before it).
 * CatDog 's finale didn't air until 2005, after it had been shown in other countries.
 * The Wild Thornberrys 's finale was delayed several months, allowing the UK to show it first.
 * All Grown Up! began its regular runs in Canada and the UK before the US.
 * Several Hey Arnold! stories aired in the UK long before their US airings.
 * Several of The Fairly OddParents episodes are aired in England long before they're shown in the U.S. Stupid Cupid was aired in Great Britain months before it was finally aired in the United States. A more notorious example is Timmy the Barbarian and No Substitute for Crazy. These particular episodes were aired in Great Britain first. In the U.S., they were not aired until AFTER the fifth season finale, Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 3.
 * The second (and last) season of Invader Zim was aired in Latin America thanks to the efforts of Mundo Nick, Nick's South American subsidiary. The season was eventually aired in North America by Nicktoons TV, several years after the cancelation of the show.
 * Like above, the 3rd season of My Life as a Teenage Robot premiered in Latin America (and Germany) a couple years before coming on Nicktoons Network. Thankfully, a fan had put up the episodes up in both Spanish and English after their premieres.
 * Like Nicktoons above, Cartoon Network also has problems with this. To name examples...
 * Several episodes of Chowder and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack premiered in Europe and South America weeks and sometimes months before its US premiere.
 * Most episodes from the second half of the final season of Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends premiered in Europe three months before they aired in the US, although the series finale did have its premiere in the States first.
 * The series finale of Codename: Kids Next Door was aired in the Philippines about a month before it was aired in the United States. The same occurred with some of the episodes.
 * Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy has finally come out with The Movie finale after years of it burning in Development Hell. . And it's been shown in Scandinavian, Australia, and Southeast Asia, in that order. It finally aired in the US in November, 2009. After it had been completed for nearly a year.
 * Justice League Unlimited had a similar problem, with episodes airing in Canada and Europe a month or more before their premiere in the US. The series finale was actually available on Bittorrent sites a full six months before it (finally) aired in America, due to this.
 * Transformers Animated suffered from various iterations of this during its second season. The U.S. and Canada broadcast used to be on the same day, but when the U.S. airing of the second episode of the second season was delayed a week (for the Ben 10: Alien Force premiere), Canada consistently remained one episode ahead for the remainder of the season.
 * Although the second season did not reach UK screens until some months after its North American debut, when it did, a new episode was aired every weekday, instead of just once a week. Consequently, the ninth, tenth and eleventh episodes of the season premiered on UK television, nearly one, two and three weeks before their Canadian airing respectively. However, the two-part season finale, "A Bridge Too Close", did not air in the UK until a month or two later, allowing Canada and America to air it first.
 * Much more infuriatingly, the entire second half of the season, from episode seven onwards, premiered in Dubai—dubbed into Arabic, no less! -- successfully ruining a lot of the surprises that were in store.
 * The second season of The Boondocks had two episodes criticizing BET pulled by Cartoon Network in the US, but aired by Canada's TeleToon without incident. Those two episodes ended up on the DVD.
 * The first 7 episodes of Winx Club 's 3rd season premiered in the US before they aired in Italy. And that same season, the 4Kids dub of the last 7 eps aired on YTV in Canada a few months before America (thus alerting viewers, for example, to this filler scene being cut).
 * And while we're on the subject of Winx, its "other" English dub is produced in Canada with Canadian voices, and YTV still ended up airing the 4K dub. Not Canadian enough for them eh?
 * Most English-speaking countries have yet to see the post-S3 movie (though Nickelodeon's acquisition of the property may change this), even though one of its soundtrack songs was performed by Australian Natalie Imbruglia.
 * And for the most bizarre example, the first country to get the 2nd movie in a regular run (after a premiere at the Rome film festival) is Russia... a country where the 1st film was apparently released direct to DVD.
 * The second season of The Spectacular Spider-Man has been aired in Australia on March 1, and was finished before the US even premiered it.
 * Canada and Bulgaria (of all places) also got it before the US.
 * Code Lyoko did this in a very tortoise-and-hare way. In France, the entirety of season 2 was played at a rate of one episode per week. In the US, it started playing shortly after it did in France, but then power-housed through half the season in three weeks, then stopped and let France catch up, and then started just showing random episodes whenever the hell it felt like it until finishing off with a mini-marathon and a season finale. It did manage to beat France to the punch, though. Later seasons weren't shown nearly as randomly though.
 * Wolverine and the X-Men was first aired on Brazil than any other country. The first (and eventually, only) season ended there even before it debuted in the US.
 * Season 3 of Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! got aired in several Scandinavian countries before it came to the states. By the time it did, most of the fandom knew about the spoilers and was keeping quiet for the sake of everybody else.
 * A bizarre and possibly literal example: Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure was theatrically released in Latin America in September 2009, ahead of its direct-to-DVD release in the states in late October.
 * And it had a short run at the Disney-owned El Capitan Theatre in LA, for the sole purpose of making it eligible for Oscar submission.
 * The Great Fairy Rescue was released in New Zealand and Australia cinemas in August 2010. Disney also ran it at El Capitan for two weeks in September.
 * Batman the Brave And The Bold's various markets have such vastly different schedules and airing orders for the second half of the first season that a given episode's first showing may be in the US, UK, Canada, or somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, without any sort of pattern.
 * Phineas and Ferb's episode "Wizard of Odd", aired it Australia first, despite that it was an American cartoon.
 * It aired in Russia too.
 * Also, the episode "The Secret to Success" was first aired in Latin America, The UK, and Russia.
 * "We Call It Maze", "Ladies and Gentlemen, He is Max Modem", "Split Personality", and "Brain Drain" all aired in Latin America. The former also aired in Taiwan and Brazil.
 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars had an up and down time with the last half of its second season, sometimes having a month long gap between episodes. It was hinted that this came about from Lucas changing some aspects of some episodes at the last second. The UK and Canada began airing some episodes several weeks before the US. During the end-run it became only a week's difference between UK and US. The US only managed to get the season finale aired a day before the UK by airing it as the second half of a two-part evening event.
 * SpongeBob SquarePants sometimes aired in Germany before the US.
 * Total Drama World Tour, dear God. A Canadian show that premiered the first episode in Canada, then decided to wait until September to air the next ones. In the mean time, the USA aired a new episode once a week. Then came Australia, who aired five new episodes a week!
 * For comparison, Australia started 18 days later than Canada, and finished before 8 days before Canada aired episode 2.
 * USA gets even further ahead of Canada (although not as bad as Australia) by having the Aftermath episodes online exclusive.
 * The Family Guy episode "Partial Terms of Endearment" was dropped from the US run (apparently because of its abortion-related storyline) and first aired in the UK. It eventually became a DVD exclusive episode in the US.
 * The final 5 episodes of Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat aired in Asia on Disney Channel Asia a whopping 6 months before it aired in the US. The cause of this is unknown, PBS was for some reason holding the episode backs to premiere in the fall, and CBC was doing the same.
 * Season 4 of the 2003 Strawberry Shortcake series aired in Europe a whole two months before it was aired in Asia. It has never aired in the US and while it received direct-to-video releases in the region, four more episodes have yet to be released.
 * At least one season of X-Men Evolution managed to air in New Zealand on WNTV long before it was screened in the States, resulting in many fanvids with 'wntv' watermarks in the corner.
 * Transformers Prime, as aired on the Hub, usually has long breaks between every 5 episodes or so, supposedly due to time-consuming animation. However, after episode 20, "Partners," aired in the US, the break proceeded as planned for a couple of weeks until suddenly, with no prior warning, Canada's Teletoon network started airing the remaining episodes of season 1. According to online schedules, the US was not supposed to begin showing this batch of episodes until nearly 2 months after the premier of "Partners"! However, as of episode 23, it seems as though someone at either the Hub or Teletoon caught wind of the situation, and what was supposed to be the premiere of episode 24 in Canada a week later was abruptly replaced at the last minute by a rerun.
 * And then Singapore aired episode 24 a few days before either network.
 * Not just episode 24, but episodes 25 and 26. Needless to say, everyone knew the twist at the end long before the episodes aired in the US.
 * In America, Jimmy Two Shoes had its second and third seasons aired back-to-back as a single season, meaning season three was finished airing nearly two months before it even debuted in Canada.
 * Young Justice episodes in Turkish and Portuguese are about three episodes ahead of the U.S. airings. Dubbed. Considering Cartoon Network has had the show for over a year and still hasn't finished airing the first season, this is insult on top of injury for the fanbase. This is all after a six-month hiatus after nine episodes, and a three-month hiatus after nine more. To repeat: the international dubs have surpassed the country of origin's airing schedule.