Something Completely Different/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Every season of Codename: Kids Next Door had one "ART" episode:
  • South Park: the "Terrence and Philip" movie and Great Expectations episodes.
    • "A Million Little Fibers" features none of the main cast. It does, however, feature a talking towel, Oprah Winfrey, a talking anus and a talking vagina.
  • The Simpsons: "Twenty-Two Short Films About Springfield", "Behind the Laughter", "Springfield Up" and "The Simpsons Spinoff Showcase".
  • King of the Hill is almost always good for a lighthearted and fairly upbeat laugh, even if it does occasionally touch on darker topics like suicide (Bill) or paranoia (Dale). These are usually played for a laugh. However, if you should ever turn on your television in the middle of the night to brighten your spirits after awakening from a bad dream and you realize that the KOTH episode appears to be a quirky romantic comedy about Luanne meeting an eccentric owner of a pork-processing plant named Trip Larson, TURN THE CHANNEL IMMEDIATELY! Or at least before the end, where the schizophrenic Trip Larsen tries to butcher Luanne and himself so they can become Larsen food products. Luckily, Peggy Hill shows up to save the day. After Luanne breaks free, Trip decides to stay on the conveyor belt and realize his dream of becoming Larsen Pork Products. Before the reaching end of the conveyor line, an electric shock is administered to his head that cures him of the voices in his head. But before he can enjoy his new-found sanity for more than a few seconds, the machine jams a large metal spike through his head (off-screen, thankfully) and Trip gets processed into food (presumably). This gives us the hilarious Peggy Hill quote, "Trip had a mental breakdown and is now a sausage."
  • Futurama occasionally showed flashback-based, almost art-house style episodes.
    • They also did two "Treehouse of Horror"-style episodes, meant to be a yearly thing.
  • Done a lot in Pucca.
  • Very common on Dexter's Laboratory: "Dim", a No Dialogue Episode; "Deedeelocks and the Ness Monster", where Deedee tells a bizarre fairy tale mashup; "Star Check: Unconventional", a parody of Star Trek: The Original Series in which a convention of doll collectors are treated as a strange alien culture; "Dexter and Computress Get Mandark", a goofy little story apparently drawn in crayon, with narration and dialogue provided by a tape sent in by a six year-old boy named Tyler Samuel Lee; and "La Bretto", which tells Dexter's life story in the form of an opera. Really.
    • There's also "Blackfoot and Slim", which is an episode presented as a nature documentry that observes Dexter (or Blackfoot as he is called in this episode) and his daily activities until he realises what's going on and tries to run away from them until he is shot with a tranquilizer dart.
    • "Cracked" which is more slice-of-life than what the show's known for.
  • American Dad includes a running storyline involving a golden turd that Roger left. This storyline will occasionally interrupt a regular episode, with the format changing to widescreen. There was also an episode done entirely in the style of a James Bond movie.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender had "Tales of Ba Sing Se," in which the episode was divided into a series of four-minute short stories, highlighting different characters and their individual adventures in the city of Ba Sing Se.
    • Not to mention the lampshade-happy "Ember Island Players", where the gang watches their adventures as performed by a (misinformed) theater troupe.
  • Transformers Armada had an episode that focused entirely on the Decepticons. Rad, the usual narrator, was replaced by Sideways, and the Autobots got barely any screen time, with the kids entirely absent.
  • Family Guy did a parody episode of Star Wars.
    • As of now, there are three: "Blue Harvest", "Something Something Something Dark Side", and "It's a Trap!".
    • And also the 150th episode extravaganca which had 45 minutes of Brian and Stewie in a bank vault.
    • The season 9 premier "And Then There Were Fewer" is a feature-length episode presented as an almost straight Agatha Christie style murder mystery, in which several recurring characters are Killed Off for Real.
    • "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q." has Domestic Abuse taken seriously.
  • Duckman had "American Dicks", presented as a detective show program on its 100th episode with Duckman as the guest detective, complete with Shaky Cam. Ultimately, it was Cornfed who solved the case.
  • Darkwing Duck would do this fairly often. In one episode, Darkwing interrupts an adventure in progress to talk directly to the audience and introduce a completely different story. In another, the fact that Darkwing had never been given an origin (though he got one in later seasons) is lampshaded with an episode which provides several different origins for him—all of which were both impossible and contradicted all the others. Yet another episode transplants the cast to the 1500's with no real explanation, save for DW kicking off the episode by actually saying "and now for something completely different!"
  • Batman the Animated Series:
    • "Almost Got 'Im", where the villains play poker and swap stories about times they almost got Batman.
    • "Legends of the Dark Knight", where kids tell each other what Batman is really like (one says he's like the Adam West version, one argues for the style of The Dark Knight Returns, and all dismiss the kid who likes Joel Schumacher's version.)
    • "The Man Who Killed Batman", where a nobody mob underling, "Sid the Squid", acts as the lookout on a job in which Batman is apparently killed. From Sid's perspective, Bats fell into a gas explosion, but everyone else thought Sid pushed him. He has to deal with a jealous Joker, an obsessed Commissioner Gordon, and a few rival mob bosses who can't believe his story.
      • The producers admitted that this episode was an experiment to see if they could make a good episode with Batman appearing as little as possible (indeed, Batman only appears for about 3 minutes total in this episode). Arguably, they succeeded.
  • Batman the Brave And The Bold had even more of these than TAS did and most of them were among the series' most popular episodes:
    • Mayhem of the Music Meister was a Musical Episode that saw Batman, Aquaman and company fall under the spell of The Music Meister (Neil Patrick Harris).
    • Aquaman's Outrageous Adventure! relegates Bats to a supporting role and instead focuses on Aquaman as he (begrudgingly) takes his family on vacation only to sneak away at any opportunity to help other heroes.
    • Chill of the Night! features a much darker plotline with many shout outs to TAS, a darker style of animation and an in depth look at Batman's origins (the show had previously stayed away from even showing Bruce without the mask, much less exploring his personal history).
    • The Knights of Tomorrow! shows a possible future for Batman and features the animation debut of Damian Wayne, the current Robin.
    • Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases! was hosted by the 4th wall breaking Bat-Mite and showcased three bizarre interpretations of the Bat (all voiced by actors other than series star Diedrich Bader who voices a supporting part in one segment):
      • Bat Boy and Rubin, based off of the Mad Magazine parody of the same name, trying to solve a series of strange murders.
      • A segment based off of the manga version of Batman, done in a style similar to the Speed Racer cartoons. Features Batman and Robin facing off against "Lord Death Man" not long after he was introduced in the American comics by Grant Morrison.
      • Finally, the last segment features Batman and Robin teaming up with Scooby Doo and friends to save Weird Al Yankovic from the Joker and Penguin. Done in the stilted and often flawed animation style of The New Scooby Doo Movies.
    • Joker: The Vile and The Villainous! features The Joker as the main character teaming up with obscure villain The Weeper against Batman. He even gets his own opening credit sequence and a Cold Open where he and Misfit defeat Kamandi only for him to pull a double cross and blow up a future version of Earth.
    • Bold Beginings! is told almost entirely in flashback as Aquaman, Green Arrow and Plastic Man exchange stories about the first time they teamed up with Batman while waiting to be rescued for Mr. Freeze. Almost a reverse of "Almost Got 'Im" from TAS.
    • Four Star Spectacular! is four shorts starring Adam Strange, The Flash, 'Mazing Man and The Creature Commandos with Batman only making cameo appearances.
    • In the series finale Mite-Fall Ambush Bug tries to stop Bat-Mite after he decides that the show should be cancelled to make way for another Darker and Edgier take and decides to use his fifth dimensional powers to make the show jump the shark in pretty much every way possible (even Ted McGinley!).
  • In Teen Titans the series finale, "Things Change", kept the fight with the Monster of the Week to a small B-plot (and never did get around to resolving it), while most of the episode focused on Beast Boy trying to reconnect with a girl who may or may not be Terra. While the series always dealt with emotional issues, usually a layer of superhero metaphor was applied. Here it was simply, bittersweetly Slice of Life.
    • The final season had a couple of these. Another episode dealt entirely with Raven babysitting a trio of superpowered toddlers, and another was about the HIVE Five trying to capture Kid Flash, and Jinx's High Heel Face Turn.
  • Two Stupid Dogs did their final episode in the style of a 1920s silent cartoon.
  • Recess did one for the Halloween special, as a Shout-Out to Treehouse of Horror. Interestingly enough, most of the writers for Recess worked on The Simpsons.
  • Season three of Phineas and Ferb had a number of Alternate Universe episodes:
    • "Tri-Stone Area" is a typical episode of P&F, except all the characters are cave-people speaking a nearly incomprehensible caveman language.
    • "Doof Dynasty" featured Ancient Chinese versions of the main cast taking part in a spoof of Wuxia movies.
    • "Excaliferb" featured Carl visiting Major Monogram and reading him a fantasy adventure story featuring medieval versions of the cast.
    • "Phineas and Ferb and the Temple of Juatchadoon" revolved around Phineas and Ferb as Indiana Jones-esque Adventurer Archaeologists.
  • Archer becomes a Journey to The Centre of The Mind and an Out-of-Genre Experience for the titular character after the season 7 finale. He is in a Convenient Coma awaiting the writers decision for him to die, wake up or remain an Empty Shell:
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