Opening Scroll: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
If you want to get your story's messy background out of the way as fast as possible but don't have the budget to shoot the background scenes for the [[Opening Monologue]], then your next best option is the
As the name implies, this is a text scroll that passes over (or in some cases ''into'') the screen, supplying all of the relevant information with minimal damage to time or budget. A variation is to have the text fade up and then fade down, but this is something that shouldn't go on for too long as it's terribly dull to watch.
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Nowadays, it's most often done as an homage and/or parody of ''[[Star Wars]]'', which itself did so as a homage to the [[Flash Gordon Serial|Flash Gordon]] serials. See also [[War Was Beginning]].
Compare [[Opening Monologue]], [[Title In]].
{{examples}}
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* Episode 2 of ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' uses one of these when [[Once an Episode|Koshi Rikdo gives premission to]] [[Genre Shift|turn Excel Saga into a sci-fi anime]], obviously as an homage to Star Wars.
* The DiC dub of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' added one of these: "From a far away place and time Earth's greatest adventure is about to begin" at the start of the show up until Jadite's death and Nephrite replacing him. After that, the scroll was abandoned.
* ''[[Overman King Gainer]]'' has one behind the [[Dancing Theme]], explaining why the action takes place in Siberia.
== [[Film]] ==
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* ''[[Scarface]]'' opens with one of these, describing how Fidel Castro sent Cubans who wanted to join their families to the United States in 1980, along with the dregs of his jails.
* ''[[Johnny Mnemonic]]'' has one.
* Similar to [[Alone in
* ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]] [[The Movie]]'' opens with an expository scroll about the backstory on the source of the Power Rangers powers. The text is read by a female voice completely straight, making the whole thing sound even more ridiculous than it is already.
** Even more [[
* ''"[[Leatherface:
* ''[[Barb Wire]]''
* ''[[Blade Runner]]'' has this accompanied by a very eerie ambience that makes the viewer feel appropriately uneasy.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* An
** The writers were planning to do an episode before this one tying up all the loose plots but couldn't make it funny enough, so they made do with a parody.
** The scroll also includes the bizarre phrase "The saga continuums..." which many fans take as an indication that the series from this point on follows an alternative continuity based on the novel ''Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'', which changes several previous claims about Lister's background.
* ''[[The Pretender]]'' opened every episode of its first two seasons with a cross between the [[Opening Monologue]] and the fade-up version of the
* ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' made a [[Running Gag]] of this in one episode. The scroll would always begin, "In (year), (noun) lay in ruins," to introduce subjects such as Hungarians entering tobacco shops, [[World War I]], or [[The End]] of the episode. The Spanish Inquisition have one in a different episode, which notes that the "violence, terror and torture" they unleashed make for "a smashing film."
* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' opens with a quick text scroll to refresh people's memories about "The Best of Both Worlds", just before they introduce Captain Sisko in the Battle of Wolf 359.
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* ''[[Halo (series)|Halo]] 3: ODST'' uses one of these. Notable as the only game in the ''[[Halo]]'' franchise (at the time of its release) to do so.
* Both ''[[Mass Effect]]'' games use this during the opening, in the first to explain humanity's entry into the galactic community, and in the second to summarize the events and ramifications of what happened at the end of the first.
** It's a small paragraph that takes less than 15 seconds to read. Hardly a scroll.
* ''[[Deadly Towers]]'' has scrolling text at the beginning that details the game's [[Excuse Plot]] in a surprisingly verbose and well-written way. The game's ending is similar.
* The [[Game Boy]] version of ''[[Kid Icarus]]'' has an opening scroll introduction, before the title screen.
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* [[The Cinema Snob]] uses these as a ''[[Star Wars]]'' homage in his reviews of ''[[The Man Who Saves the World]]'' (also known as ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20130827115347/http://thecinemasnob.com/2009/10/07/turkish-star-wars.aspx Turkish Star Wars]'') and ''The Tramps in Planet Wars'' (''[https://web.archive.org/web/20121203041217/http://thecinemasnob.com/2009/10/17/brazilian-star-wars.aspx Brazilian Star Wars]''), where he writes up phony backstories to how the movies got made, complains about how much time he spent on finding video editing software that lets him do ''[[Star Wars]]''-esque text crawls, and [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] his own bullshit [[Techno Babble]], wondering how George Lucas comes up with what to write in these crawls.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* The television show ''[[Arthur]]'' episode "Return of the Snowball" has an opening scroll as a homage to ''Star Wars''. And one of the characters reads it, too.
* The ''[[Family Guy]]'' ''[[Star Wars]]''-spoof movies parody this, naturally: the second starts off normally, before [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]] halfway through.
{{quote|"Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have - okay, you know what? I realize space is vast, but [[Lampshade Hanging|this scrolling text is still littering]]. I mean, somebody's gonna run into this thing eventually. Yeah, it might be a thousand years from now, but does that make it okay?" }}
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