Special Edition Title

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
(Redirected from Special Edition Theme Song)

A variation on a show's usual Title Sequence for a special event. Does not cover the regular evolution of a title sequence from season to season. Likely to occur in conjunction with Something Completely Different. Can also be applied to the ending sequence, if the show has one (e.g. Anime).

Also done in movies with company logos—especially Warner Brothers. See Logo Joke for that.

Compare to Couch Gag and Evolving Credits, which can often evolve the entire title sequence and thus fulfilling aspects of this trope as well.

Examples of Special Edition Title include:

Anime and Manga

  • Done in Soul Eater for episode where Maka befriends Crona. It shows the two characters walking together hand in hand during the end credits, as opposed to Maka walking alone.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, a Lower Deck Episode focused on the military recurring characters changes the intro animation and narration; the usual changing pictures of Ed and Al are changed to a photo of the unit, and the title is given as Flame Alchemist, referencing the unit's commanding officer.
    • Two episodes of the series also have special ending sequences, replacing the normal upbeat ending with somber ones fitting the events of the episodes in question.
  • In the episode of Nana when Nana "Oh" first sings her hit song "Rose" over the phone to a friend, the ending credits are replaced with a shot of the friend's cell phone and computer, and the second verse of the song.
  • Gun X Sword liked to change its closing credits sequence to reflect major events. At the end of Carmen99's focus episode, "Paradiso" replaces the usual closing theme ("A Rising Tide") and plays over a picture of her instead of the usual montage. "Paradiso" plays over a still shot of fallen roses after another episode. And at the end of Episode 24, "Calling You" plays over the quiet beach scene that Ray fantasizes as he dies.
  • Macross Frontier had an episode based on the filming of a movie telling the plot of Macross Zero. The closing credits were done in the style as the end credits of the movie - even having a scene afterwards set during the premiere.
    • Various other episodes of Macross Frontier had special end credits, usually continuing whatever song is being sung by Ranka or Sheryl at the time.
  • Inukami!'s ED is normally a cute little number about friendship among girls. In an episode where the perverts of the town save the day, the ED suddenly changes itself to be about friendship between manly men. Completely new graphics and lyrics, same tune. Ridiculous and yet, it works so well.
  • The opening for some episodes of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo featured some clips from that season's movie. Similar for Fresh Pretty Cure, which previewed the Bat Family Crossover movie (and later, the season's actual movie) on its opening.
  • The seventh episode of the originoal Tenchi Muyo! OVA completely dropped the opening title sequence for a simple, low key, dark opening, as a reflection of the end of episode six.
  • The Title sequence for Tenchi Muyo! GXP usually features silhouettes of regular series stars Ryoko, Ayeka, and Tenchi. During the episode "Seina and Tenchi", which featured the original cast, they showed them completely.
  • The ending theme of Axis Powers Hetalia changes from time to time depending on who the episode mainly focused on and whether or not their version of the theme was already made.
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The first Season Finale is a Cold Open which completely omits the opening credits and theme music.
  • For the Series Finale of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, The shot of the spiral galaxies during the ending sequence speed away until you can't see then anymore.
  • A minor example from Transformers: Micron Legend - In 51 episodes, the title is superimposed on a picture of Optimus Prime. The one exception was the episode "Cramp", where the Episode Title Card was omitted and the episode title was projected directly on top of Starscream's face.
  • One episode of Naruto had an ending celebrating the beginning of the Year of the Dog that replaced the regular imagery with Naruto in a dog costume, Pakkun and Akamaru all hopping around.
  • There's an episode of Hidamari Sketch where Miyako draws a sketch of Yuno in the preparations for the school festival. The finished work is shown at the very end of the closing credits.

Fan Works

  • Audio example: Fobbies Are Borange has had several opening song changes; from a sophisticated theme for the two episodes with a British narrator, to the a cappella theme for the Moonside episode, to the epic song for the final episode.
  • Script Fic Calvin and Hobbes: The Series has one for season 3 premiere "Dr. Brain Chill"; the credits are overlaid on various shots of space.
    • Same with "Tracer Bullet in Color!", taking after film noir opening credits.

Live-Action TV

  • Done at least twice in How I Met Your Mother
    • One is where the characters are playing instruments
    • Another is Barney centric [1]
  • Jonathan, a minor recurring character, took over the credit sequence of the "Superstar" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
    • The musical episode "Once More With Feeling" had a mellowed version of the theme song playing over a shot of the night sky, with each actor's face appearing on the moon as he or she was listed in standard credits order.
    • Similarly, a few episodes changed the Vanity Plate at the end: "Becoming, Part II" features the little monster lamenting, "I need a hug..." in place of his normal "Grr, argh!", there was a Christmas episode in which he wore a Santa hat, and the above-mentioned OMWF had him sing his grr-argh. Likewise, in the Season 7 documentary-style episode, he sing-songs "We are as GOODDDDSSSS", a running joke in the preceding episode.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise replaced its usual titles, showing a history of exploration, with a version showing a history of conquest for the Mirror Universe episode "In A Mirror, Darkly".
    • It even went far enough to change the theme song. Oddly enough, many fans prefer the new theme to the show's real theme...
  • The "what if" episode of Friends featured a Title Montage of the "what if" versions of the characters. These clips were not seen in the ensuing episode.
    • The first episode of Friends after Courteney Cox married David Arquette appended "Arquette" after each cast member's name.
  • Supernatural has made special opening credit for several episodes:
    • 3.08, 'A Very Supernatural Christmas' Instead of the normal opening (which featured an exploding Devil's Trap), this christmas special had an exploding ornament and a Santa hat over the A.
    • 4.05 'Monster Movie' was a parody of classic black and white monster movies, with a black and white opening
    • 4.18 'The Monster At The End of This Book' showed cover art from the series of Supernatural books within a show written by Chuck Shurley as Carver Edlund.
    • 5.08 'Changing Channels' also contained parodies of several stock television shows, and replaced the opening titles with a sitcom-style montage, complete with appropriately-styled theme song and credits (in the "Full House" font, no less).
    • 6.09 'Clap Your Hands if You Believe' paid homage to The X-Files and redid the opening to play the X-Files theme and show footage of the brothers in the same sort of poses as the orginal X-Files opening did. (Title sequence starts at about 1:03 in that video.)
    • 6.18 'Frontierland' copied the burning map credits from Bonanza
    • 7.08 'Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!' had an exploding wedding cake with Richard Wagner's Bridal Chorus for music.
  • During the "occupation" storyline, the 2000s Battlestar Galactica replaced images of the fleet with those of New Caprica under Cylon occupation, and used a different title crawl.
  • The "X-Cops" episode of The X-Files used a modified version of the title sequence from Cops.
  • When The Drew Carey Show filmed an episode in China, the "Cleveland Rocks" sequence was replaced with a simple Title-Only Opening with the show's title in English and Chinese (accompanied with the drawing of Drew from the "Moon Over Parma" sequence).
  • Psych is fond of doing this in "theme" episodes, usually remixing or completely changing the theme tune as well. The Christmas special featured the same lyrics and melody as the normal song, but with sleighbells and over-the-top "Christmas-y" instrumentation, while in episode 213, "Lights, Camera...Homicidio", the credits are sung in Spanish.
    • Also, in Season 4's "Bollywood Homicide", the song picks up a distinctly Eastern sound; most of the theme song was sung in Hindi, and the actors' names appeared in Hindi text which then switched to English letters.
    • The sixth season episode "The Amazing Psych-Man & Tap Man, Issue #2" is done with the theme redone in a heroic orchestral style and the opening sequence in comic-book panels, specifically an homage to the opening sequence of The Cape.
  • Done in the two Something Completely Different episodes of News Radio. The one set in space had Standardized Space Views instead of the usual Establishing Shots of New York City. The Titanic parody had an Irish folk version of the theme over sepia-tone shots of people salvaging artifacts with the actor's pictures on them.
  • The Just Shoot Me episode "My Dinner with Woody" had the titles done in the style of the credits of Woody Allen movies (plain white text over black).
  • The Babylon 5 episode "The Corps Is Mother, The Corps Is Father" used a credit sequence with Psi Corps insignia in place of the usual Babylon 5 shield.
  • Red Dwarf sometimes changed the end credit music, for instance the first appearance of Ace Rimmer had the normal Rimmer play out the theme on a hammond organ, whilst Gunmen of the Apocalypse had a wild-west version of the music, and "Waxworld" ended with an Elvis impersonator singing it.
  • The Stargate SG-1 Parody Episode "200" abandons the concept of a minute-long Title Montage used for most of the series' run. When discussing The Movie of the Show Within a Show Wormhole X-Treme!, Cameron Mitchell insists on a "strong opening title sequence", while Martin Lloyd says, "No one does that anymore. You just throw up the title and get on with it." This is immediately followed by a Title-Only Opening for Stargate SG-1.
    • Though this is only borderline "special"; during this part of the show's run, the shorter form was always used when the show was first aired, to leave more time for commercials. However, the full opening had been back for a few episodes.
      • If anything, it was more of a Take That at the Sci-Fi Channel's much-maligned decision to remove the full-length Title Sequence.
  • Jekyll did this for the finale—changing the title of the show itself.
  • One episode of Clarissa Explains It All has her Brother, Ferguson take over the role of Breaking the Fourth Wall. The credits change the name of the series to Ferguson Explains It All.
  • Episode 26 of Monty Python's Flying Circus has a Double Subversion of this: an announcer says the Queen might be watching, but the opening titles will proceed as usual; they don't.
    • Episode 22 replaced the title with a banner reading, "How to Identify Different Parts of the Body".
    • Episode 30 replaced the show's title with Tony M. Nyphot's Flying Risccu, an anagram of the show's title(the opening sketch involved a man who spoke only in anagrams).
    • In a What Could Have Been example, when Executive Meddling threatened to change the show's title, the Pythons threatened that every week they would rename the show to a different Word Salad Title.
  • The Young Ones did this two weeks on the trot with Nasty - done in the style of a Hammer-Horror film - and Time - the first five minites including the titles sequence parodies Dallas.
  • When the '80s to '90s revival of the Mickey Mouse Club did a reunion special with the original '50s version, they mixed footage of the old theme into the newer theme and added the "Donald Duck!" and "High, high, high!" bits that weren't in the later version. You can watch it here (it comes after the Mouseline segment).
  • In a Volume 3 episode of Heroes, the usual title is replaced with an evil-looking 'Villains'.
    • The episode is called "Villains".
  • Kamen Rider Decade, being also a Toei production like Pretty Cure, also promoted its movies by replacing part of its opening sequences with scenes from the Kamen Rider Den-O film The Onigashima Battleship for the second part of the Den-O arc and the entirety of the Kabuto arc, and with scenes from All Riders vs. Great Shocker, lasting from the Black RX arc to the penultimate episode (That makes five episodes up until the final one, making that one a borderline Evolving Credits as well.). Considering that its Grand Finale is in the form of a movie premiering three months after the series ends proper, this leaves it up to...
    • ...Kamen Rider Double to promote that (and its own movie. Yes, it's a double feature that eventually converges into a crossover.) in the same way, starting with episode 12. Near the end of the series, the opening changed again to promote Double's second movie.
    • Double also did special openings in a story arc centering on an American Idol-style TV show, replacing half of the standard opening with footage of the theme song's performers (who play judges in those episodes) performing the theme on the "Idol" stage.
    • The 'movie footage in the opening' thing has become a tradition since Decade started it. OOO did it three times (for Movie Wars Core, Let's Go Kamen Riders, and OOO Wonderful) and Fourze has done it for Movie Wars Megamax. The movie footage is never the same in any two episodes, though. Super Sentai, on the other hand, only movie-ifies end titles..
  • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had a miniseries, Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers, where the the entire world (Rangers included) was under a time-reversal of 10 years, leaving the Rangers as powerless kids (as they didn't have their powers yet back then), so aliens stood in for them until they managed to find the Reset Button (and new powers, since the bad guys managed to destroy the Power Coins while the rangers were unable to fight). It featured a Special Edition Title with a special edition theme song, "Go, Go, Alien Rangers!"
  • One of the later episodes in Season 5 of Lost had, rather than its normal opening sequence with the "LOST" logo flying at the camera, a similar sequence on a starfield, and then the Enterprise flew by to promote the 2009 Star Trek film, also released that year.
  • The final episode of The Prisoner has the same end credits, but the opening credits replace the famous normal opening with a long helicopter shot over the Village, accompanied by a different theme music (actually written as the second half of the theme and only broadcast once before, as part of the incidental music in "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling"). This was probably because it was the second half of the show's only two-part story. It was also the first time that it was publicly revealed that the show was filmed at Portmeirion, which had previously been kept secret to heighten the in-show mystery of the Village's location - although ironically the Portmeirion location was not used in the last four episodes.
    • The episode "Living In Harmony," a Western Elseworld, replaces the opening with an equivalent sequence in which the character rides into town and turns in his sheriff's badge.
  • Fringe uses this whenever there's a timeshift, flashback or major alteration in reality. As well as the style and images displayed, the list of cutting-edge "Fringe concepts" is often used to suggest the nature of the world.
    • The episodes "Peter" and "Subject 13" mostly takes place in The Eighties, and [[{{Retraux|looks like as an eighties science program]]; the credits are revamped with a Synth Pop version of the opening theme, a more "computery" font (Amelia, more specifically), and namechecks 80s "cutting-edge-at-the-times" science (indcluding "personal computing" and "stealth technology")
    • In episodes set in the parallel universe starting with the season two finale "Over There Part 1 and 2", the usual blue background was now red and several of the sciences shown are different. In the eighth episode of Season 3, which is set in both universes, the title sequence goes back and forth between red and blue.
    • The final episode of Season 3, which takes place in a future that probably won't occur (it makes sense in context...mostly), has a gray background and yet again different "cutting-edge" sciences, such as cryptozoology, chaos structure, and (to underscore how terrible the "prime" universe has become in 15 years) hope and water.
    • The 4th season episode "Letter of Transit" takes place in a futuristic fascist dystopia. As well as images of barbed wire walls and faceless masses, the "Fringe concepts" include "Imagination", "Due Process" and "Freedom".
  • The Office episode "The Michael Scott Paper Company", has all other characters removed except for Michael, Pam, and Ryan—the only employees of the Michael Scott Paper Company, filmed in their office only. The post-Super Bowl episode added specific shots of secondary characters in groups of two or three rather than the usual text only credit.
    • In the first episode after Michael Scott's departure, the last shot of the opening montage (Michael adjusting the Dundee Award on his desk) is replaced with a similar shot with his replacement, Deangelo, adjusting one of his kachina dolls.
  • One episode of The State began with David Wain explaining that all of the group's members have different specialties. His is editing, and though he gets less recognition for it, it is surprisingly good at letting you express yourself. Cut to a version of the opening titles in which Wain's credit is repeated over and over and the other cast members are only featured for a fraction of a second.
  • To celebrate its 50th anniversary, two 2006 episodes of As the World Turns used the original opening, with a remake of the original opening theme.
  • At the end of the opening credits for the NCIS episode "Power Down", the lights in DC all go off, and then the video cuts out.
  • For its final episode, Ashes to Ashes skips Alex's narration and the opening titles, instead just showing the words "Ashes To Ashes".
  • The season 4 premiere of Eureka, which involves Time Travel back to 1947, has sepia-toned visuals and replaces the whistling in the standard theme tune with a big band. The Christmas episode in the same season has everything covered in snow, with the whistling replaced by a chorus singing "fa la la".
  • For the two versions of Thirty Rock's Live Episode, Jenna (east coast) and Danny (west coast) performed a version of the normally-instrumental Theme Tune With Lyrics at the Saturday Night LiveTGS studio, with the regular opening shown on an adjacent widescreen monitor.
  • Community does this fairly regularly:
  • Done in a minor way in the India-themed episodes of Sanctuary. While the normal title sequence remained unchanged, an Eastern-sounding song was added instead of the usual tune.
  • The Sex and the City movies have a re-orchestrated version of the theme music. Not the only thing that's overdone about the movies.
  • Variation: Mystery Science Theater 3000 sometimes had special commercial bumpers and/or ending credits, when prompted by the movie or one of the host segments. The typical version was to put different music over it, especially "the haunting Torgo theme", but other examples exist.
  • Noels House Party, a production by The BBC featuring Noel Edmonds, did this twice. First of all, on the 15 March 1997 for the Very Special Episode Noel's New York House Party - video here, with the crescendo of the music featuring a view of the Statue of Liberty, and, more bizarrely, the guests' names on-screen - Tyne Daly, William Shatner, David Hasselhoff, Joan Rivers and Barry Manilow. The words "New York" were in "Broadway" font, a font considered naff by some nowadays.
  • The Christmas Episode of Warehouse 13, makes numerous changes to the title sequence.
    • The titles open with a quick burst of "Joy to the World", before moving into the main theme, which now has a sleigh-bell refrain.
    • The crate in the Sphinx picture is giftwrapped.
    • The scarab sheds red-and-gold sparks
    • The next crate is labelled "Fruitcake".
    • The map is of the North Pole.
    • The Establishing Shot of the warehouse is a snow scene in a pop-up book.
    • Toys, cookies and candy canes are propped up on the Farnsworths the cast appears on.
    • The Tesla is replaced by the snowglobe from the episode "Breakdown".
    • It's snowing over the title.
  • The Granada TV version of "The Final Problem" (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) replaced the opening violin tune with a slower, sadder version.
  • The credits of the last episode of Blakes Seven were completely silent except for gunshots.
  • The Daily Show did this one time, and it involved a globe. The reason for this is they had Neil deGrasse Tyson as a guest, who on at least one previous appearance on the show, complained the [regular] opening of the show had the earth spinning in the wrong direction. The reason the Daily Show didn't change they're regular opening was doing so was prohibitively expensive.

Radio

  • Talk show host Herman Cain of The Herman Cain Show normally warns any audience members still driving at the start of his show that "there are some nuts on the road", on some holidays, he has warned that there are "even more" nuts on the road.
  • The episode of The Archers in which the long-serving and much-loved Phil Archer died didn't play the show's theme tune at the end, instead fading out to Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius", which Phil had been listening to as he passed away peacefully at home.

Video Games

  • Elite Beat Agents does this in a few levels for impact. In "You're the Inspiration" for example, they don't count down or wave their arms, and the title appears over a picture of their client, rather than the agents saying "Hey! Mission!" like always.
    • In "Jumping Jack Flash", they only have the countdown, due to it being a continuation of the last level.
  • The Japanese predecessor to Elite Beat Agents, called Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, has a few of these as well. In the original, "Over The Distance" had a much quieter call for help and had their target running down the stairs to Heaven instead of the more Hot-Blooded regaining of spirit and countdown. In the sequel, "Believe" and "Sekai wa Sore wo Ai to Yobun da ze" are similar to "You're The Inspiration" and "Jumping Jack Flash", respectively.

Web Original

Western Animation

  • The "international" episode of Animaniacs has the theme song and opening entirely in French. Most of the rest of the episode is in English (albeit with internationally-themed segments), except for the short "Les Boutons et le Ballon" (which is presented in French with English subtitles, which are unfortunately missing from the DVD release).
    • The "Christmas" episode of Animaniacs has the regular credits but with snow.
  • The "Pinky and the Brain and Larry" episode of Pinky and The Brain opened with Rob Paulsen squeezing in "And Larry" or similar after every line of the theme song, as in "One is a genius; the other's insane" "(The other one's Larry!)"
  • Histeria! had a few episodes with unique opening sequences used just for that episode.
    • Histeria! probably had more opening sequences than any other show at the time.
  • "The Dabba Don", an episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law wherein Fred Flintstone is accused of racketeering, has a title sequence that combines the famous The Flintstones title with a black and white montage and a theme song parody of The Sopranos opening.
  • The Simpsons replaces its title sequence for every "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween episode.
    • Also, they had Grampa rambling over the credits (until the logo at the end says "shh") and Homer moaning about being poor, complaining about the rich people in the credits as they went on (unfortunately, the latter is replaced with the standard credits audio in syndication).
    • The Movie has Ralph Wiggum pop up on the 20th Century Fox logo and go "Da Da Da DAAA!" along with the music.
      • The episode after the movie featured the town still cleaning up after the various disasters from the movie.
    • The recent Christmas episodes had the entire opening Christmas-themed. The odd thing is, they removed Bleeding Gums Murphy in this version, but kept the equally-deceased Maude Flanders.
    • The episode "24 Minutes" had the opening parody that of 24.
    • The episode "You Kent Always Say What You Want" just ran a Simpsons short from the Tracy Ullman era in place of the opening.
    • The episode "To Surveil with Love" replaced the opening with a remix of part of Ke$ha's "TiK ToK".
  • Minor example: In the Cold Opening of a Kim Possible episode called "The Ron Factor", the Global Justice network tells Kim that they want to study her sidekick, Ron. Kim expresses extreme disbelief (as she strongly believes herself, as opposed to Ron, to be the main success of their missions), then interrupts the title sequence to express it again. "No seriously, you want Ron?" At the interruption, the Theme Tune is slightly faded down, and the normal montage at this point is replaced by Kim's complaint.
  • A few episodes of Hey Arnold! do not play out their regular title sequence. Namely, "Arnold's Christmas", "Arnold's Thanksgiving", "Parents Day" and "Dino Checks Out".
  • Teen Titans uses a Japanese version of its theme songs as cue for its especially bizarre Filler episodes. In Episode 24, "Fractured", the opening sequence is sung in Japanese by Larry, the tiny version of Robin from another dimension, and features Larry in the sequence. Later, in A Day in the Limelight episode for the Hive 5, Jinx interrupts the song to tag the screen with a honeycomb and say, "We're the Hive 5, and this is our show now!"
  • The Christmas Episode of SpongeBob SquarePants had the normal theme, but sung in high, angelic voices with jingle bells, and the usual title logo replaced with a title card showing SBSP decorating a Christmas three.
    • The episode "What Ever Happened to SpongeBob?" replaced "SpongeBob SquarePants" in the theme with "WhoBob WhatPants".
  • Another show with a special title for Christmas was Codename: Kids Next Door's "Operation Naughty", with the normally-white background turned green, snow falling over the titles, and the title decorated by Christmas lights (see here). That episode also had a teaser. Only "Operation End" and "Operation Knot" had a Cold Opening before this, and those were much shorter than the one in "Naughty".
  • Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Pinky and The Brain all had special openings for their respective Christmas Episodes, in which jingle bells played with the music and snow fell over the titles. Also, the latter two had specially themed lyrics.
  • As a Mind Screw, the producers of The Venture Brothers did the opening to the season 2 premiere... without the titular brothers. Source.
    • The first episode of the third season was all about the villains, and thus the credits featured their silhouettes in place of the expected titular brothers.
  • The Backyardigans had these for both two-parters. For the first one, "International Super Spy" (parodying the James Bond movies), there was an opening in the style of the episode rather than the regular one. For the second, "Tale of the Mighty Knights", the theme song is done in the style of '70s hard rock.
  • The 1962 Looney Tunes short "Now Hear This" replaced the usual WB shield in concentric circles with abstract spinning lines and a jarring "modern" version of the theme song, a fittingly unnerving opening for a truly deranged cartoon. A couple of years later, when WB shut down their animation studio and started farming Looney Tunes out to other studios, this became the standard opening for what is generally acknowledged as WB's Dork Age.
  • The original Rugrats Christmas episode used a Christmas-based remix of the title theme.
  • Not that noticeable, but the 10th anniversary special of The Powerpuff Girls had the entire intro remade in Flash animation (which was used to make the special).
    • Also, the Musical Episode didn't have any opening but the show's title and "Documentary" began with the title of said in-universe documentary.
  • A Recess two-parter has Lawson form his own group who manage to outsmart T.J.'s good deeds in every way possible, to the extent they end up being forgotten by the playground and are driven into obscurity. The second part opens with a cut-down version for the opening titles, only for Lawson to yell "Hold it!" A modified version of the titles then plays out, with Lawson's group replacing T.J,'s (plus, Miss Finster ends up standing without Randall and the clock numbers are all jumbled up for whatever reason).
  • Both Daria made-for-TV movies featured special titles.
    • And in the Musical Episode, the theme song was altered to sound more like it belonged in a musical production.
  • The Halloween Special of What's New Scooby Doo cut the opening credits altogether and instead showed the words A Scooby Doo Halloween in large letters over the opening scene as a Title-Only Opening.
  • The early full-CGI series ReBoot had special titles for several episodes.
  • Happy Tree Friends uses Halloween graphics in the opening for Halloween-themed episodes, complete with the theme song being done in minor key.
  • Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation had the Expository Theme Tune retooled to be about a different vacation, with Phineas and Ferb doing Christmassy or wintery things. And it was sung by Victorian carolers.

Carolers: As you can see, there's a whole lot of stuff to do before school starts next year,
So stick with us 'cause Phineas and Ferb are bringing you Christmas cheer!
Candace: Mom! Phineas and Ferb are making a Christmas special!

  • The Futurama episodes "Mars University", "Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television", and "Spanish Fry" all have different versions of the Theme Tune playing.
  • The Batman: The Brave And The Bold episode "Joker: The Vile and The Villainous" has the Joker as the main character, and told about his team-up with another supervillain to fight Batman. Hence, the opening animation was changed to be about the Joker doing things that Batman usually does in the opening, and the short stinger before the opening credits was about Joker helping another supervillain instead of Batman helping a superhero.
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