Milestone Celebration

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the franchise, they built one. A full size one.

"I will not celebrate meaningless milestones."

Chalkboard Gag, 100th Simpsons episode

Show pilots are a very tricky process. They are made, and even if they get a chance on the air, the vast majority of them fail within a few weeks. With other shows, they sometimes will build up a dedicated audience that will fail to keep the show alive long enough. Most of the time.

Most full television seasons are between 20 and 26 episodes long. There are various exceptions, animated shows can go from 13 episodes to well over 40 episodes. With such a vicious market, the ability to reach the 100 episode mark is a rare and coveted thing. So when a show does achieve that milestone, they plan something big to not only draw ratings, but to break out into the three digit episodes.

This will often coincide with the Very Special Episode, but it could also be the Tonight Someone Dies or other similar episodes. It may avoid all of that and the episode is just given an additional polishing to make it one of the best episodes of the series. It may also result in a Milestone Redo, when elements (or even the entire plot) of the series' first installment is directly homaged in celebration of the event.

In the case of Long Runners and shows where a hundred episodes is not that big of a deal, the celebration is sometimes in the form of "10 Year Anniversary" or something similar.

Part of the celebration is that pure money is offered with syndication rights, which a general rule of thumb is to have 100 episodes to air in certain time slots like Nick at Nite does. Because the show was already financed and produced, this will bring in the nostalgic viewers without much effort.

But no matter what, remaining in the public view for five years is an impressive event in any form of media.

Remember, Examples Are Not Recent.

Examples of Milestone Celebration include:

Anime and Manga

  • Inuyasha did a special retrospective type episode for its 100th. All the characters got stuck in demon moth cocoons and thinking about how InuYasha always helped them out while InuYasha was trying to rescue them.
  • Sailor Moon ended with episode 200.[context?]
  • Pokémon had a special episode made in part to celebrate 10 years since the franchise launched with the Pokémon Red and Blue Game Boy games in Japan in 1996. The kicker, it aired in the U.S. (with new voice actors) first, where the fans there only had Pokémon since 1998.
  • Die Buster was made to commemorate Gainax's 20th anniversary.
  • The Naruto manga celebrated its ninth anniversary with a page showing Gaara and Naruto posing with a certain group of seven other people.
    • They did this yet again for its tenth anniversary with a cover of Naruto clones working on a puppet of his newly-acquired Sage-Mage enhanced Rasenshuriken technique.
    • The anime had an Omake for the 349th episode about the characters celebrating the 350th episode...which the title character himself wasn't invited to because he was not in it (the whole episode was about Sasuke and Itachi), and then noting that before this he was absent for the 100th episode (which was about Might Guy, Rock Lee, and Tsunade) and the 300th (the episode of the fight against Hidan and Kakuzu right before he showed up). Which is funny, because most of the characters who were invited there weren't in that episode either.
  • To celebrate Shonen Jump's 40th anniversary, there was a special anime tour moving through ten cities in Japan, showing anime movies that had been made just for the occasion. This included a new Dragon Ball special, which concluded its anime run (in Japan anyway) eleven years ago, making it a bit of a milestone celebration for Dragonball as well.
  • The Gundam franchise has had several over the course of its long life. The 10th anniversary was marked by the All That Gundam special and the OAV Gundam 0080, and the 15th by G Gundam, the first AU Gundam series. The 20th saw the "Gundam Big Bang Project", which included movie versions of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Endless Waltz and Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, culminating with Turn a Gundam and the live-action movie, G-Saviour. The 25th saw the Zeta Gundam movie trilogy (which also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the series), Gundam SEED Destiny, and Mobile Suit Gundam MSIGLOO: The Hidden One Year War. However, there was no new Gundam anime produced for the 30th anniversary celebration (The Gundam 00 film, A wakening Of The Trailblazer, was released in 2010, after the 30th Anniversary celebration was over).
    • The 30th also featured a special animation showing all the protagonist Gundams in action together. And of course, they built a life-size statue of the original.
  • Macross Frontier was originally planned as a 25th anniversary for Super Dimension Fortress Macross. It ended up a year late, but the show was still full of references to the number 25: the new fighter was the VF-25, Frontier was the 25th fleet, the main Macross ship was the Macross Quarter (25%), etc. The show also related to elements of all the previous Macross series.
  • Tatsunoko Production's Karas was made for the studio's 40th anniversary.
  • The Yu-Gi-Oh Tenth Anniversary Movie marks the ten years of the Yu-Gi-Oh anime series (not including the Toei series), featuring the main protagonists of the original, GX, and 5Ds series teaming up.
  • Transformers Energon included the 500th episode of Transformers to be shown on Japanese TV. It was a weird, pointless episode that spoofed Professional Wrestling.
  • One Piece Film Strong World, the 10th movie corresponding to the series' 10th year anniversary, was penned by Eiichiro Oda himself; as confirmed by Word of God, this means that this is part of the manga's canon. However, this is largely Averted in the One Piece anime itself. No milestones in the series are particularly heralded as special events, and significant events only happen on episodes 250 (end of Franky's origin flashback), 300 (Zoro's defeat of CP9's Kaku) and 400 (Silvers Rayleigh talking about Gold Roger).
  • Pretty Cure All Stars DX was made for the show's fifth year.
  • For Azumanga Daioh's tenth anniversary, the manga was re-released with updated artwork and new chapters.
  • The Slayers franchise celebrated its 20th anniversary with re-releases: both new cover art and slight changes in dialogue for the light novels and new boxart complete with new supplementary materials for the anime.
    • Earlier in 2006, for its 15th anniversary, Megumi Hayashibara released a new single, Meet Again, and it was accompanied with a new animated music video of the characters, making it the first animated feature for the franchise since the Slayers Premium movie in 2001.
  • For the 30th anniversary (2008) of both Rumiko Takahashi's first published short story (Katte na Yatsura) and the manga version of Urusei Yatsura, three new OVA episodes (one for each of Urusei Yatsura, Ranma ½, and Inuyasha) were made, along with an animated short Crossover of those three series. (The Inu Yasha OVA episode, which covered the Black Tessaiga arc, was later reused as part of the second TV series.) These were initially shown during that year at a gallery show, called "It's a Rumic World", which also featured manga manuscript pages and other illustrators' drawings of Takahashi's characters on display.

Comic Books

  • In Spawn #100, Malebogia, the Big Bad of the first 99 issues, is killed off. Spawn's nemesis/occasional ally, Angela, is also killed.
  • Sonic the Comic celebrated its 100th issue (and, by extension, 200th week in existence) by ending the Robotnik Rules arc, which had been going on since issue 9. Some argue it Jumped the Shark then.
    • Amusingly, the Archie comics just reached #200, which it celebrated by...Sonic's defeating Robotnik, who promptly goes medically insane (though he eventually recovers).
    • Issue #50 of the Archie comic concluded the End Game story arc and killed off Dr. Robotnik. Issue #75 then replaced him with a alternate-universe counterpart that looks like the game's "Eggman" version, rather than the cartoon incarnation the comic was originally based on. The alternate Robotnik has been in charge ever since.
  • Cerebus ended with issue #300. This event had been planned for 27 years.
    • The previous centennial issues each featured major turning points in his life: issue 100 introduced Cirin, the Big Bad of the series, and revealed that she was an Aardvark like Cerebus. Issue 200 has Cerebus meet his creator in space, and upon his return he gives up on adventuring and settles into the life of a barfly.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes had a #300 in 1983 which was the 25th anniversary, which put to rest the AdultLegion story and brought back artists (and even logos) from various eras of the Legion. Natural for a comic published every month for 25 years—except it wasn't. The Legion had moved between comics and ended up getting the numbering of the Superboy comic, which wasn't monthly throughout its run; the fact that issue #300 was the 25th anniversary was pure coincidence.
    • Also, the 10th anniversary (Superboy #147, 1968) finally revealed the origin of the Legion. The 30th anniversary (volume 3, #45, 1988) brought back the older artists again. The Legion has also done standard anniversary issues according to the cover numbering, meaning that V3 #50 was an anniversary issue with a letter column commenting on another anniversary issue.
  • Amazing Spider-Man #50 was the famous "Spider-Man No More!" story where Peter quits being Spider-Man (duh), but finds himself unable to quit as the Kingpin rises to power.
    • Issue 100: Peter tries to remove his powers, has an acid-trip dream where he fights the Vulture, the Lizard, the Kingpin, Doctor Octopus, and the Green Goblin before seeing an image of the deceased George Stacy. When he wakes up, Spidey discovers he has six arms, kicking off the Six-Arm Saga that introduced Morbius.
    • Issue 200: Spider-Man faced Uncle Ben's killer, the Burglar (who was now working with Mysterio) once more.
    • Issue 300: First full appearance of Venom.
    • Issue 365: Celebrated the 30th anniversary of the web-spinner with a story that had Spider-Man fighting the Lizard again, the re-introduction of Peter's parents (who would later be proven to be androids), a sick poster of Spidey, Venom, and Carnage, and a preview of Spider-Man 2099.
    • Issue 400: Ended with the death of Aunt May and the revelation that she'd known Peter was Spider-Man for years. Most of the fandom agreed it was a fitting sendoff for the character. Naturally, this was retconned a little over a year later...
    • Issue 500: Spidey helps Doctor Strange and several other heroes deal with a demon invasion in New York, magically revisits several moments in his past, and gets to meet Uncle Ben's ghost for five minutes thanks to Strange.
    • Issue 600: An upgraded Doctor Octopus attempts to make up for his past misdeeds by taking electronic control of New York City, the idea being that he can make everything far more efficient. Unfortunately, his subconscious mind attacks Spider-Man, endangering everyone around him, and tries to ruin the arrangements for Aunt May's wedding to J. Jonah Jameson Senior. Spidey beats Doc Ock at the site of their very first battle, and May and JJJ Sr are married by Jonah himself. Oh, and Mary-Jane shows up to catch the bouquet.
    • For Spidey's 50th anniversary in 2012, Marvel is doing the first-ever crossover between the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Marvel universe; as Peter Parker faces a world where he was killed in action and Miles Morales (the new Ultimate Spidey) sees what his predecessor might have grown up to be.
  • Don Rosa has done a few of these:
    • For the 60th anniversary of Donald Duck's creation, he wrote "The Duck That Never Was", a Wonderful Life story set on Donald's birthday.
    • He also did "W.H.A.D.A.L.O.T.T.A.J.A.R.G.O.N", a story for the 60th anniversary of Huey, Dewey, and Louie's first appearance that was a Whole-Episode Flashback to the day the nephews joined the Junior Woodchucks.
    • For Scrooge McDuck's 50th anniversary, Rosa wrote a story "A Little Something Special", where Scrooge's biggest enemies plot to rob him during a celebration of the anniversary of the day Scrooge arrived in Duckburg.
    • Even Gyro Gearloose got a 50th anniversary special, "Gyro's First Invention", which featured a Whole-Episode Flashback that explained where his little robot Helper came from, and explained how he helped Scrooge get the money in his money bin out of the sinkhole it fell into after the events of Carl Barks' "A Christmas for Shacktown".
    • Furthermore, there is Gladstone Gander's 50th anniversary special, "The Sign of the Triple Distelfink", wherein he tries to avoid his own birthday party, in order to hide the fact that his birthday is the one day of the year when his legendary luck leaves him. A flashback in this story reveals he was literally Born Lucky, having inherited his good luck from his mother.
  • Most Archie Comics digests will have special stories for their Milestones, where the characters discuss exactly how they should celebrate said milestone.
    • Archie Double Digest #200 celebrated 200 issues with the start of a 4 part "New Look" story entitled Archie Goodbye Forever, and even bigger than that, Archie #600 celebrated 600 issues with the start of a 6 part story entitled Archie Marries Veronica (of which the final three parts switched to Archie Marries Betty).
  • In 1985, DC Comics celebrated their 50th anniversary with Crisis on Infinite Earths, which brought a Cosmic Retcon Continuity Reboot upon the DC Universe.
  • In the DC Universe, several Post-Crisis titles hit #100 at about the same time in The Nineties. All of them were given special prismatic covers. In addition:
    • Superman launched "The Death of Clark Kent" Arc, in which Superman temporarily gave up his secret identity.
    • Wonder Woman had the death of Diana's Anti-Hero Substitute, Artemis, leading to the restoration of the status quo.
    • Justice League America gave honorary membership to the entire DC Universe, and then had a big fight against Lord Havok (revealed to the reader, but not the team, to be Maxwell Lord). And then Guy Gardner showed up, kicking off the "Way of the Warrior" Crossover between JLA, Guy's own title and Hawkman.
    • Green Arrow had the title character killed and replaced by his son. (He got better, but not for a decade).
    • The Flash discovered the Speed Force, the source of all super-speedsters powers which continues to affect the series to this day. He then used it to give himself a serious power upgrade and save his city from the brink of annihilation.
  • In July 1986, Marvel Comics celebrated their 25th anniversary (the 25th anniversary of the Fantastic Four, their flagship Silver Age title) with a cover theme - every comic published in that month had a portrait of a character on it surrounded by a border containing various characters. Even the licensed comics got in on the act.
    • In 2009 when Marvel celebrated their 70th Anniversary (the 70th anniversary of Captain America (comics)) (just roll with it) many comics were published with Variant Covers with a style very similar to the 25th Anniversary listed above.
  • The UK version of the Marvel The Transformers comic, due to a quirk of publishing, ended up with over four times as many issues as the US comic. Issues #100, 200, and 300 all featured wraparound covers and double-length stories.
  • The Dandy and The Beano celebrated their 60th birthdays and 1997 and 1998 respectively. Both put out double-length issues in which The Dandy resurrected numerous older strips, while The Beano printed a series of stories based around the number 60.
  • Both also hit issue 3000 around the year 2000. The Beano's honouring of this was nothing special, but The Dandy featured a series of stories based around trouble caused by the '3000 bug', a spoof of the then-recent millennium bug scare.
  • 2000 AD has done a few:
    • For the 10th anniversary, a badge reading '10 years of Thrills' was inserted somewhere in each strip.
    • For the 30th anniversary, which was also the 30th anniversary of the first Judge Dredd strip, they began the "Origins" story, which explains how the world of Judge Dredd came to be. John Wagner had been planning on writing that story for a while, but figured that the 30th anniversary was the right time to publish it.
    • The 10th anniversary of 2000 AD's sister title, Judge Dredd Megazine, ran Judge Death's Origin Story.
    • In 2010, the Meg's 300th issue and 20th anniversary occurred within two issues of each other, and os issues 300, 301, and 302 were all double-length (and the price was raised by a pound; issue 303 was still 50p more than 299, grumble grumble). Across all three were run two special features:a three-part in-depth interview with Carlos Ezquerra, and past writers and artists reminiscing about their favourite parts of the Meg. Issue 302's Judge Dredd strip was full of all sorts of continuity nods and the final panel, while making perfect sense in the context of the story, was clearly a happy birthday message to the Meg.
  • For its 80th anniversary, Dick Tracy ran a storyline from September 18 to October 23, 2011, which doubles as a follow up on a 1948 story arc and a Milestone Redo of the first storyline (as recounted by Sam Catchem to Lizz Worthington).

Film

  • Movie studios often get updated Vanity Plates on their anniversaries. The first few movies with the updated logos also contain messages denoting the anniversary.
  • Universal celebrated its 75th anniversary[1] by opening each movie released in 1990 with the logos that graced their works from 1927-1990, and a then-new logo (though they skipped the version that refers to them as Universal International). Fittingly, this montage first appeared at the beginning of Back to the Future Part III.
    • Universal released a similar video for their 100th anniversary,[2] preceding another new logo with the ones used from 1927-2012 (they did not exclude the Universal International ident this time), but has so far only posted it online.
  • Tangled has a Logo Joke for the Disney Animation Vanity Plate proclaiming the film as being the 50th movie in the Disney Animated Canon.
  • Cars came out during Pixar's 20th anniversary. To commemorate this, the Pixar logo fades into "Celebrating 20 Years" written against a black background, with Luxo Junior's light bulb forming the zero in the 20. Cars 2 celebrated Pixar's 25th anniversary with a Creator Cameo of Pixar head John Lasseter. (It also introduced an uncelebratory first for Pixar, but that's neither here or there.)

Literature

Live-Action TV

  • Star Trek celebrated 30 years with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager doing special episodes that referred back to the original crew. Deep Space Nine did a revisioned look at the events of the classic episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" via Time Travel and Voyager also did a The Greatest Story Never Told with what Captain Sulu did during the majority of the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The reason why Voyager had one featuring Sulu was that "The Trouble With Tribbles" was one of several Season 2 episodes to not feature Sulu (thanks to George Takei filming The Green Berets) and it just seemed strange to not include the character somehow in the 30th anniversary.
  • The 100th episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer coincides with the fifth-season finale, in which Buffy dies (for the second time). "The Gift" additionally was the last Buffy episode to air on The WB network before the series moved to UPN in September 2001.
    • The episode began with a "Previously On..." segment that contained clips from every single previous episode, all going by at very high speed.
  • In Angel‍'‍s 100th episode, "You're Welcome", Cordelia awoke from her mystical coma and reinvigorated Angel's fighter spirit. And it was revealed that she had died.
  • Power Rangers celebrated 10 years with "Forever Red" in Power Rangers Wild Force. 10 years of Red Rangers returned for a fight that crosses over into several past seasons. They did 15 years with "Once A Ranger" in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, which had some of the more popular (non-Red) Rangers return for another fight.
    • Power Rangers' 500th episode (during the Dino Thunder season) was a big Clip Show showcasing most of the series. It also moved the story forward a bit, as the Dino Rangers finally found out that their teacher and mentor, Tommy Oliver, was a veteran Power Ranger (the very first Sixth Ranger, and Red Ranger to the following couple teams). The very next episode saw Tommy climb back in the saddle as the Black Dino Ranger.
    • And in a bit of fortuitous timing, the final Disney season before Saban claimed the franchise back, Power Rangers RPM, ends with the 700th total episode.
    • Toei has confirmed they're filming a Big Badass Battle Sequence for Power Rangers' 20th anniversary, mirroring the one they did for Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. Details beyond that are unknown right now.
  • On the other side of the Pacific, in 2006 Super Sentai celebrated its 30th Anniversary[3] in Go Go Sentai Boukenger with the after-show segment "The 30 Sentai Encyclopedia", short skits hosted by the Boukengers briefly reviewing every show and every first over the past 30 years, as well as shared themes between shows. There was also the Crossover Reunion Show, featuring the physical manifestation of the 30 Years of Sentai in AkaRed, who had the power of all the past Red Rangers combined, along with a Ranger from the previous four Sentai series.
    • Before that, Kousoku Sentai Turboranger was launched as the then-eleventh show (tenth anniversary) of Super Sentai. Its first episode was a special Clip Show that summarized the previous ten shows and featured 53 Sentai heroes in costume (which seems a modest number nowadays, when the first episode of Gokaiger had almost four times that amount). Interestingly, Toei decided to add two previous shows into the canon later on, making the Turboranger officially the thirteenth. The only reason they weren't included before was they lacked the Humongous Mecha.
    • There was also a 25th anniversary team-up movie featuring the Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger teaming with five Super Sentai members from past series.
    • On a smaller note, the 15th reunion movie, Engine Sentai Go-onger vs. Gekiranger, saw a theatrical release instead of being Direct to Video for being number 15; acknowledged in the movie's ending when the heroes celebrate a birthday party, and calling it "a Super Sentai birthday". Then theatrical releases for reunion movies became the norm.
    • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, the 35th series, is Super Sentai's equivalent to Kamen Rider Decade, with the heroes channeling powers and mecha of previous Ranger teams. Previous Rangers themselves also make guest appearances. In a nod to the previous anniversary, AkaRed was the one who gave them their powers.
      • Usually in Super Sentai, the aforementioned reunion movies are released in January near the end of the current series' run. However, since A. the Gokaigers' reunion film with their predecessor Tensou Sentai Goseiger was produced far earlier in Gokaiger's run and B. 2012 happens to be the 30th anniversary of the Metal Heroes, Toei decided to do something completely different for the January film: A crossover movie between Gokaiger and the first Metal Hero, Space Sheriff Gavan.
  • Kamen Rider, in chronological order:
    • Kamen Rider ZX, the tenth hero to bear the Rider monicker, is a low-key version. He was first advertised in a year-long promotion campaign across several mediums before finally debutting in a TV Special.
    • The Deconstruction film Shin Kamen Rider Prologue was made for the 20th anniversary of the franchise.
    • Averted by Kamen Rider Agito: the only thing marking the show as the 30th anniversary of the franchise is a disclaimer opening the first episode. Then again, the franchise was just fresh off a Revival at the time; survival was a more pressing matter back then. However, Agito did introduce traditions that would stick for all the following years, including multiple Riders as the norm and the utter lack of ending credits.
    • Kamen Rider Kabuto had a few smaller things to celebrate the Kamen Rider franchise's 35th anniversary, including the return of blatantly insect-themed suits and after-show review segments for episode 23 to 27.
    • Kamen Rider Decade, a year-long celebration of 10 years of the franchise's Heisei era in the form of a Crisis Crossover (a crisis which, oddly enough, eventually expands to celebrate the franchise's 38-year history by the end).
    • Kamen Rider OOO and Kamen Rider Fourze collectively celebrate the franchise's 40th anniversary. (Yes, this means they're taking two years to do it. Just go with it.)
      • The Let's Go Kamen Riders movie features OOO along with the original two Kamen Riders and Cash Cow Sub-Franchise Kamen Rider Den-O. The rest of the Riders make cameos as Big Damn Heroes during the final fight, too. The film also doubles as a celebration of the Toei Company's 60th year, which it marks with a special cameo scene where four of Shotaro Ishinomori's non-Kamen Rider Toku heroes intercepting and quickly killing off a retreating General Shadow. Furthermore, episodes 27 and 28 of Kamen Rider OOO happen to be the 999th and 1,000th episodes of the franchise as a whole, and feature the characters...filming a movie about Kamen Rider.
      • Kamen Rider Fourze is named for "40", in-universe for the 40 Astro Switches he can use but obviously also for 40 years (in addition to continuing the previous years' Numerological Motif [Decade was 1, Double was 2, OOO was 3]). It also mentions Urban Legends about previous Riders, and uses Theme Naming that references classic Riders. Plus the traditional crossover-with-the-previous-Rider movie was expanded from just OOO and Fourze to include the first seven Riders and OOO's predecessor Kamen Rider Double. And on top of all that, a joint anniversary crossover with Shin Chan.
  • Building off the previous entries, Kamen Rider X Super Sentai Super Hero Taisen is stated by Word of God to not be an anniversary bash for either series, but it's hard not to take it as one - released during Fourze and hot on the heels of Gokaiger, featuring them plus OOO and Decade in some of the featured roles, and including just about everyone else in the battle sequences. It also roughly coincides with the 10th year of the Super Hero Time block that features both franchises.
  • Stargate SG-1 had "Wormhole X-Treme" as its 100 episode, and another metahumor episode for the 200th episode.
  • Friends "The One Hundredth": Phoebe gives birth to the triplets.
  • Smallville featured the death of a main character in the 100th episode. In the 200th episode, Season 10's "Homecoming", Clark lets go of his guilt over his father's death, which was the aforementioned main character death that happened a hundred episodes earlier. And, at the very end of the episode, he and Lois share a dance, and, without either of them noticing, he begins to hover.
  • Doctor Who:
  • The X-Files had a fake 100th episode; they claimed it to be the 100th episode in the promos but if you do the math, the episode is the 99th episode to air. Scully's cancer was cured in this episode and it also concluded a few other subplots as well. The actual 100th episode to be aired was a flashback episode that showed how the Lone Gunmen formed in 1989 and met Mulder and Scully was not in that episode. Their 200th episode was some stupid Brady Bunch episode.
  • Stephen Colbert did the 100th episode of The Colbert Report in a tuxedo, and had the same guest as on the first episode (the first ever repeat guest). The Daily Show ran segments celebrating their '10 F#@king Years' anniversary every now and then for six months.
    • The '10 F#@king Years' segments were made more hilarious by the collective cast acting as though they hadn't achieved something, but rather that they had just been through something terrible, and it wasn't over yet.
    • The Fifth Anniversary Show was supposed to be a big deal with lots of correspondents weighing in, but everyone had something else to do at the last moment and sent apology videos (Stephen Colbert's was a Video Will). Even the guest was on the other end of a satellite connection.
  • Law and Order Special Victims Unit's 200th episode guest starred Robin Williams. Come on, you know that was meant to be special (so to speak).
  • The 100th Scrubs episode was an elaborate parody of The Wizard of Oz, directed by Zach Braff.
  • Referenced in Monk with the CSI parody episode. The actual hundredth episode of Monk features Monk's 100th case as a documentary. And then Monk ends up solving his 101st case inadvertently.
  • The 300th episode of ER had the doctors betting on the number of patients they would have that night. The winner had a round 300.
    • Its 100th episode had them host a woman who was born 100 years ago that day.
  • CSI: Miami brushed with the Trope for their 100th, "Death Pool 100". The case just happens to involve counterfeit money, specifically $100 bills, but it's easy to miss. At the end of the episode, after most of the Montage Out, the core cast gathers on a beach casually talking about the case. The conversation ends by Leaning on the Fourth Wall:

Calliegh: Everyone thinks it's easy to make a hundred.
Horatio: We know better.

  • Lost's 100th episode, "The Variable", which was actually #96, hinted at Tonight Someone Dies in previews (someone did, fan favorite eccentric scientist Dan Faraday), tied in advertising for the 2009 Star Trek movie as well as the show Flash Forward, and aired immediately following Barack Obama's 100th day address. As for the episode itself, it established the plan to alter the course of the series and prevent the crash of Oceanic 815. The occasion was also marked by a special Ace of Cakes with an awesome 100th episode cake.
  • The 100th episode of Frasier has the entire city of Seattle commemorating "Frasier Crane Day", to celebrate Frasier's 1,000th radio broadcast, and also has Niles and Frasier actually on-location and walking around Seattle.
  • Seinfeld had a clip show called The Highlights of 100.
  • In the 100th episode of Charmed, the constantly switching between good and evil character Cole Turner aka Belthazor was finally Killed Off for Real. In the 150th episode, the resident Mr. Exposition Leo became human. The Avatars have something to do with both events.
  • The 100th episode of That '70s Show was a musical, with Fez imagining the cast covering some of the '70s hit songs.
  • The Ultra Series show Ultraman Mebius and its tie-in movie Ultraman Mebius & The Ultra Brothers were made "Comemmorating 40 Years of Ultraman", revisiting the original Showa era universe (Ultraman to Ultraman 80) after 25 years of alternate universes and featuring returning actors, characters and monsters from there.
  • How I Met Your Mother. 99 episodes of almost zero amount of information about the mother, then comes along episode 100 with a huge information overflow.
  • Game Shows do this a lot. One example (of many) was the 3,000th episode of Trebek's Jeopardy! — the opening round featured the same categories used in Trebek's premiere (with new clues), Double Jeopardy! featured special categories worked around the milestone, and the Final Jeopardy! category was "Holidays", the same as the first episode.
  • Sesame Street had anniversary specials during years 10, 20, 25, 30, and 35. The 40th anniversary had to settle on-air with "40" (the highest number in the show's curriculum) sponsoring the season premiere. That season was also loaded with Easter Eggs.
  • Barney and Friends had Old King Cole come over for a visit in episode 100. Barney is reunited with some alumni to celebrate ten years, and gets a memory book after twenty years.
  • True Life so far has had a "Where Are They Now" episode for its 100th episode (2007) and it's 200th episode (2011). In them, they revisited some of the most memorable people (the 100th episode included a girl with Tourette's Syndrome and a little person who was a Britney Spears impersonator, 200th episode included an alcoholic who ran over her boyfriend and a girl who had alopecia).
  • The tenth season premiere of Mystery Science Theater 3000 had TV's Frank returning to reap souls ("Second Banana Heaven was way too political") and Joel Hodgson returning to fix up the Satellite of Love.
  • The 100th episode of Thirty Rock was a one-hour episode about the Show Within a Show's 100th episode, and was even titled "100th".
    • The episode also featured special guest appearances from Michael Keaton and Tom Hanks, the important plot point of Tracy deciding to leave movies to return to TV, the return of Dennis Duffy (a recurring character who was Liz's boyfriend in the first season) and a gas leak that caused the cast to reminisce about the past while in an altered state.
  • The entire 25th and final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show is a milestone celebration, with her bringing back her favorite or most shocking guests.
  • The 100th episode of Bones flashes back to how Booth and Brennan met and first worked together and has Booth confess his love for Brennan.
  • In Supernatural 's 100th, Sam and Dean finally meet their half brother Adam and also rebuild their relationship.
  • Gilmore Girls 100th episode has Emily and Richard renewing their wedding vows.
  • The 100th episode of One Tree Hill has Karen return for Lucas's wedding where he is left at the altar, and Dan rescues Nathan and Haley's son Jamie after he is kidnapped.
  • The 100th episode of Desperate Housewives plays with the Tonight Someone Dies card by killing off a previously unseen character who has been a part of the main character's lives for over a decade, the flashbacks in the episode show his involvement in their lives. Season one characters Martha Huber and Yao Lin also make a reappearance.
  • NCIS celebrated their 200th episode "Life Before His Eyes" with a lot of continuity nods to the previous eight seasons. Word of God says this episode was a "gift to the fans".
  • The 100th episode of Criminal Minds was actually called "100". The episode was told in Anachronic Order with the team being interviewed by Strauss because Hotch killed an infamous serial killer who murdered his ex-wife.
  • Meanwhile in soap operas, Neighbours had celebrated both episode number milestones and anniversaries, usually by having some big event happen in the episode in question. Especially big milestones were the 1000th episode, the 10th anniversary, the 3000th episode, the 20th anniversary, the 5000th episode, with cameos from many former characters (some of them extremely former) and the 25th anniversary (in late 2010). The 6000th episode (and the week leading up to it) created a mystery over a murder attempt on Paul Robinson's life, which kept going for several months after.
    • To be fair, every 1000 episodes usually marks the culmination of some storyline, or a special event thrown into the middle of the plots, as has the 10th, 20th, and 25th (I don't recall anything at the 5th or 15th however). Other massive events typically happen at the end of each shooting season of the soap (ie. they shoot for about 230 episodes per year and then stop for an "end of year" finale).

Theatre

  • Cirque Du Soleil company milestone celebrations:
    • Alegria launched in 1994 as the 10th anniversary show; the year also saw the retrospective documentary A Baroque Odyssey.
    • The 20th anniversary was marked with, among other things, the retrospective book 20 Years Under the Sun and the Midnight Sun concert in Montreal. The latter doubled as a 25th anniversary marker for the city's international jazz festival, which the concert was held at.
    • The 25th anniversary included a stilt-walking event centered on Las Vegas, a two-disc Greatest Hits Album featuring songs from almost every show produced up to that point, and a book on the company's costumes over the years.
  • The 20th anniversary of the London production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera was marked with the BBC documentary special Behind the Mask. The 25th anniversary was marked with a mega-staging of the show at Royal Albert Hall (140 cast members as opposed to the usual 40, etc.), followed by a "grand finale" featuring appearances by most of the original London cast and a performance by Sarah Brightman (the original Christine); this was filmed and released on video.
  • The tenth anniversary of Les Misérables was celebrated with a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, and the 25th with a staging in the O2 arena.

Theme Parks

  • The Disney Theme Parks have interesting anniversary promotions for whenever a park reaches the 10th, 25th, etc. anniversary of its opening day, usually debuting new rides/additions to the parks, new/updated shows and parades, and usually a large gimmick. For its 25th year, Disney World's Cinderella Castle was transformed into a gigantic pink cake.
    • Mickey Mouse's 60th birthday was acknowledged at Florida's Magic Kingdom with a whole themed "land", Mickey's Birthdayland, in 1988; the park kept it and tweaked its theme over the years (first it became Mickey's Starland, then Mickey's Toontown Fair) until it was torn down in The New Tens to make way for the Fantasyland expansion.

Toys

  • Transformers has had quite a few of these:
    • Transformers Generation 1 20th Anniversary: a huge transformable figure of Optimus Prime, complete with his trademark gun, laser axe, a miniature Megatron in gun mode, and of course, the Matrix of Leadership.
      • 25th Anniversary: the original Optimus Prime toy was rereleased with the inclusion of a DVD of the first three episodes of the original series and a copy of the first issue of the Marvel comic book. Also, new toys were produced based on characters from throughout the franchise, from G1 to Transformers Armada.
    • Beast Wars 10th Anniversary: a rerelease of several figures along with two new figures of Optimus Primal and Megatron. All the toys had pieces which could be used to build Trans-Mutate.
  • Nendoroids are adorable, pseudo-bubblehead figurine primarily aimed at Otaku. With that in mind, the 100th release in the line is a character who falls outside of that demographic: Mickey Mouse, who is quite jarring when put next to franchises such as Touhou [4] or Vocaloid.
  • Bionicle got a line of six small sets called the Stars, a collection of remakes of characters from across the series' decade of existence. They also happened to be the last sets before the line got the can. They tend to be perceived as a rather weak way to both celebrate a milestone and end the line.

Video Games

Web Animation

  • Homestar Runner: Strong Bad tried (and failed) to answer 50 emails in a row for his 50th Strong Bad E-mail, presented his 100th email (a flashback of how he met Homestar) in widescreeeeen!, and traveled to meet alternate universe versions of himself for #150. For #200, there was a big build-up only for the resulting email to be addressed to Homestar rather than Strong Bad- it's then revealed that Homestar has had his own email show all along, which Strong Bad tries to ruin.
    • Also parodied in Issue 10 of Teen Girl Squad. Keep in mind that in Teen Girl Squad, everyone dies Once an Episode:

Cheerleader: It's our tenth issue-versary! Let's do a Clip Show!
So-And-So: Let's have a wedding!
The Ugly One: Let's have a baby!
What's Her Face: Let's kill someone off!
Narrator Strong Bad: Okay! (everyone dies suddenly in bizarre ways)

  • This practice was thoroughly mocked by Zero Punctuation. His 100th episode opened with him celebrating the event, complete with party hats and noisemakers. So, to commemorate the event, he reviews a very special game; Call of Juarez: Bound in blood. Which...is exactly the game he had scheduled anyway.

It's just a number. 101 is also a number. And so is 99, and at least that one looks like someone getting bumfucked.

    • Later in the review, a sentence is abruptly interrupted by another noisemaker bursting out the side of Yahtzee's head, apropos of nothing. He just apologizes for the interruptiona nd goes on with what appears to be a bloodied ear.
    • Then, two episodes later, he actually does review a game he really likes: Silent Hill 2.

And what better game to celebrate my 102nd episode?! *noisemaker*

Web Comics

  • In the hundredth Twisted ToyFare Theatre strip, "Tonight, one of these characters will die!" Quoth Mego Spidey: "Hope it's me."
    • Note that the characters themselves have a huge party to commemorate the event - but Reed Richards secretly confides in Spider-Man that this isn't actually the 100th strip, technically speaking, due to some miscellaneous strips featured in Toyfare's sister magazines like Wizard and Inquest Gamer. As such, at the very end Spider-Man goes back in time to three issues ago and gives the huge cake from the party to the stars of the real 100th strip, the motley bunch of Stormtroopers.
  • 8-Bit Theater never does anything special for its milestones, even for its 1000th. Although the titles do sometimes reference the number, such as "Episode 255: Maximum 8-bit Hexadecimal Value is FF. Coincidence?", "Episode 404: Comic Not Found", "Episode 666: Is Just Another Comic, Calm Down", "Episode 911: It's A Conspiracy", "Episode 912: For Real Emergencies", "Episode 913: The Last Of The 9XX Jokes", and "Episode 1000: I can't believe someone was asshole enough to make 1,000 sprite comics" followed by "Episode 1001: I can't believe someone was asshole enough to make more than 1,000 sprite comics".
    • The 300th one may count, as it gave a sneak peak of the Light Warriors' class changes and major character Sarda. It also had a big Time Skip gag.
  • Order of the Stick was intended to have the group meeting Xykon on the hundredth strip, but the writer messed up the timing, and had one character complaining about it ("And I was expecting something impressive for the hundredth episode.") Every other hundredth was something special, though. The two hundredth was the very long battle with Miko, the 300th revealed Xykon's massed army, the four hundredth was a kiss between two major characters, the five hundredth was the start of Roy watching the rest of the Order, and the six hundreth is when the POV switched back to Roy, though they repeat the same "I thought there'd be something special..." joke from the 100th episode, and then hang a lampshade on it. However, the 700th and 800th comics had nothing particularly special about them, and it wasn't even lampshaded.
  • 1/0, in addition to ending with comic #1000, dedicated comic #251 to its "1000th panel" celebration.
  • Megatokyo used its comic #1000 to show Kimiko having a critical part of the nature of the world around her revealed to her, and revealed Miho's Little Miss Badass status in strip #1024 (#1 KB).
  • Captain SNES managed to work its 200th story comic celebration into the plot. The 500th was slightly clumsier.
  • Narbonic had this very silly one-year anniversary celebration.
  • Questionable Content #666: Spontaneous metal interlude!
  • VG Cats had a flash animation for the 100th comic, and actually skipped the 200th comic with a note reading "TBA 2009".
    • Which now reads "TBA - Never".
  • Adventurers! had hundreds of comics numbered 999 so that the final chapter would be number 1000.
  • Awkward Zombie has its 100th comic, in which Master Hand kills the recently returned Roy in one hit.
  • Sluggy Freelance includes a piece of simple animation every year on its anniversary (usually making someone dance to the song "X Years of Nifty Darn Comics"). The tenth anniversary featured this plus a bonus comic that referenced the "spam Satan" joke from the very first strip.
  • Darths and Droids celebrates every 50th strip by adding another level to the string of "What our webcomic is in this universe, since the thing we're parodying doesn't exist" strips following the 50th strip.
  • The KAMics is usually sarcastic about it's milestones, comic #500 is a good example of this.
  • Every hundredth Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic strip is in color.
  • The 200th comic of Brawl in the Family had a musical accompaniment, dedicated to all the Mooks that died at the hands of gamers everywhere.
  • Xkcd skipped comic number 404, so that a 404 'File not found' error appears if someone tries to access it.
    • And for the 1000 th comic, a binary joke: only 24 comics till a nice round number![6]
  • In honor of Platypus Comix's 10th anniversary, accessing the site during the week of February 7, 2011 brought up a page which resembled the homepage used in 2001. Through the Wayback Machine, the page even included links to old comics and articles, as well as a dated homepage for Platypus Comix's parent site, Toon Zone. Clicking, "Click here to restore status quo" brought up the usual website, decked out with a vertically-oriented banner, which featured characters from both ongoing and discontinued comics partying together.
    • During the 10th anniversary of Platypus Comix's parent site, Toon Zone, the cartoonist released an Electric Wonderland comic in which the main characters find themselves in Toon Zone's domain while pursuing a thief.
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: "Happy first anniversary, Dr. McNinja!" It's a Wham Strip.
  • El Goonish Shive, used to celebrate each year of the comic with a filler comic featuring the whole main cast. It stopped doing this after the 6th anniversary but acknowledged the 9th with this filler which has links to previous milestone celebration comics.
    • For the 10th anniversary, it celebrated with a filler comic that mimics the setup and dialog of the very first comic but is in color, features transformations, references the anniversary and has a different ending.
  • Sonic the Comic Online celebrated the 250th issue of the series with a mega-packed issue. The issue is the largest so-far in the series, the online fancomics or the original Sonic the Comic; it also featured more artists in one issue then any other issue. It feature various cameos from characters that haven't appeared in a long time.
  • Arthur, King of Time and Space ended its first year with the Battle of Beldegraine and Arthur learning who Morgan is. It ended its second year with a timetravel flashforward. The third and fourth aniversaries just get mentioned in passing, and the fifth aniversary is the pre-Time Skip Wham! Episode. Sixth passed without comment (except in The Rant), and seventh wasn't even mentioned there.

Web Original

  1. referring to the 1925 re-branding as Universal Pictures Company, Inc., not the 1912 founding of Universal Film Manufacturing Company
  2. referring to the 1912 founding of Universal Film Manufacturing Company
  3. referring to the number of seasons at the time, not the age of the Super Sentai franchise since it began in 1975
  4. (no, Nazrin doesn't count)
  5. culled from Space Channel 5, Valkyria Chronicles, Virtua Fighter and Virtual On
  6. 1024 is 10 000 000 000 in base two. The next binary milestone will be 100 000 000 000 (2048 comics), and at 4096 comics the total would be 1 000 000 000 000 in binary and 1 000 in hex.