Vanity Plate

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"That's some bad hat, Harry." —Jaws

A short sequence played at the very end of a program's Closing Credits to identify the production company that created the series. Sometimes also called "vanity cards," "taglines", "sign-offs", "closing/production logos" or an "endboard", these brief sequences display the production company's trademark/logo. They can occur at the beginning, which is usually done in movies to the opening beats of the theme music.

If you were wanting to read about literal vanity plates, see Vanity License Plate.

Some companies put a great deal of effort into creating a memorable vanity plate, as this is really the only advertising the production company receives. This has led to famous examples such as the MTM Kitten and the Mutant Enemy Zombie, or infamous examples, such as the Screen Gems "Filmstrip S," also known as "The S from Hell." See more at the Vanity Plate/Nightmare Fuel page.

CGI in recent years has made these considerably snazzier.

The Closing Logo Group Wiki has information on these and practically every vanity plate EVER.

If a Vanity Plate becomes known the world over, then it's also an Iconic Logo. See also Logo Joke for vanity plate variants made for specific movies. Compare Station Ident.

Here are some of the better known or more unusual "vanity plates":

Western Production Companies

• 20th Century Fox: The 20th Century Fox "logo statue", complete with its moving searchlights, usually with a shortened version of the 20th Century Fox Fanfare. Futurama poked fun at this one by replacing it with "30th Century Fox", while Robin Hood: Men in Tights pulled a gag involving a messenger company called "13th Century Fox." Yes, the messenger beast was a fox. Monty Python also poked fun at this with "Twentieth Century Vole".
• AKA Cartoon: Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy and a few others. The company logo, a caricatured Danny Antonucci (company founder) being skewered by a pencil, accompanied by a generic car-crash sound and a saxophone riff.
  • The logo is remarkably different in every season, special (excluding the Cartoon Network Invaded special) and even The Movie of Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy.
• Amblin Entertainment: Steven Spielberg's production company features an animated reproduction of the scene from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial where E.T. rides in the basket of Elliott's bicycle as they fly across the sky, silhouetted by a full moon.
• ABSOLUTELY: Producer of Tim and Eric shows on Adult Swim, namely Tom Goes to the Mayor and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!! It features an amateur video of a man saying "ABSO... LUTELY!", while the word is printed beneath in pink. The man is actually Tim's dad, and he was responding to the question "Sum up this vacation in 2 words".
• Bad Hat Harry: Bryan Singer's company, produces House, probably among others. Supplies the page quote. A brief cartoon of two cartoon men on a beach. One is wearing a hat. The other says, in a slightly helium-affected voice, "That's some bad hat, Harry." The whole thing is a Shout-Out to Jaws.
  • Jaws may be unique in having inspired the names of two production companies, Bad Hat Harry and A Bigger Boat (as in "We're gonna need...").
  • A new logo appeared before X-Men: First Class with the lineup from The Usual Suspects in silhouettes.
• Bad Robot Productions: Lost, Alias, ...anything J.J. Abrams. An animated logo of a boxy, brightly-colored robot running through tall grass as a chorus of children call out, "bad robot!" (In movies, there is no voiceover.)
• BBC: Old videos from the BBC used to have one of these on them at the start and finish of a program. It featured a 3D blue and gold flat map that turned into a spinning globe and back again. All the while, really creepy music played. Not that BBC Scotland ident was much better. That used to be three bars that roughly produced a shape that looked like Scotland, and each bar would appear to an upward, minor scale, which was also a bit creepy.
  • The older BBC Video ident was better.
• The Bedford Falls Company: Production company responsible for the late 1980s ABC show Thirtysomething and mid-'90s Teen Drama My So-Called Life. Snow falls on a Victorian house as the line "...and dance by the light of the moon..." from the song "Buffalo Gals" is sung. Shout-Out to the movie It's a Wonderful Life. The film was set in the town of Bedford Falls, NY, and there is a scene where Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed sing "Buffalo Girls" before stopping to throw stones through the windows of the abandoned house they would later renovate and live in.
• Belisarius Productions: Donald P. Bellisario's plate. Starts with a stone with sand on it, which blows off to reveal "BELISARIVS". The screen flashes several times, leaving us with "BELISARIUS PRODUCTIONS". Has been used in its original form for over 25 years, with the only real changes being that CBS tends to speed it up and drown out its original soundtrack with generic jingles and promotional announcements.
• Best Brains Incorporated: Not having a standard-issue logo, the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000 chose to invent The Stinger—a five-second clip from the episode itself, run behind the BBI name.
• Big Dog Productions uses a logo with a caricature of Jay Leno.
  • Similiary, One Ho Productions has an arguably creepy Al Hirschfeld caricature of Whoopi Goldberg
• Steven Bochco Productions: The company behind Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Doogie Howser, M.D., and NYPD Blue. Features a violinist—actually an old photo of Bochco's father, who was a concert violinist, animated via computer—playing rapidly, with appropriately synchronized music. Capitol Critters features a variant with a cartoon mouse playing the violin.
• Braniff: Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "company" credited for South Park. Actually an old commercial for Braniff Airlines that Trey and Matt stuck on the end of early South Park episodes when they realized they didn't have a production company logo to put on the end. It stuck.
  • In the uncut, unaired version of Cartman Gets an Anal Probe, there is a variant that has six pantsless guys dancing (the "Braniff Airlines" text works as the censor bar) singing, "Bra-Niff Air-Lines!" View it here
  • The "pah PAH-PAH PAH! Pah pah-pah pah-pah-pah! pah-PAH!" jingle came from "Shpadoinkle Day", a song in Cannibal! The Musical
• Cartoon Network Studios: For most shows, a "pencil test" of characters from the preceeding show perform a simple action, in a rectangular box. The top and bottom of the box are the two text lines of the Cartoon Network logo. The sides collapse, sometimes as a result of the characters' actions, and the box closes. For The Life and Times of Juniper Lee (as well as the Pilot Movie for the aborted Party Wagon), the "Studios" portion of the logo is added to the CN logo via a "scanning" effect.
  • Also, the former vanity plate used at the beginning of Cartoon Cartoons, which featured a bunch of squiggly lines going around the screen to very cartoony music, culminating with the logo and one of the stars of the show about to air popping out of one of the Os saying "Cartoon Cartoons". A similar but distinct one was used during the Friday night "Cartoon Cartoon Fridays" block.
• Castle Rock Entertainment, which was behind Seinfeld and many movies, featured a logo of a lighthouse in the distance which briefly shone its light at the camera. This was accompanied by a five note melody, which was given a full orchestra remix starting in 1997.
• Chuck Lorre Productions: At the end of Dharma & Greg, Two and A Half Men, and The Big Bang Theory, Chuck Lorre would put a plate up for two seconds which consisted of a blank background, a heading which read "Chuck Lorre Productions #(no. of vanity plate)" and a big chunk of text, accompanied by a burst of angelic choir. Viewers had to tape the show and pause the plate to read Lorre's latest humorous discussion of his beliefs and observations. At first the plate was white text on black, but it was changed to black text on white because it was easier to read. Eventually Lorre came up with a standard placeholder message (which pretty much described itself as a placeholder message) for the times when he was running low on material. Read some of Lorre's plates here.
• Columbia Pictures: The famous image of a woman in a tunic standing on a dais holding a torch. Updated from time to time, but the theme is virtually unchanged since the black-and-white era.
  • For Cat Ballou, the woman rips off her toga, showing her wearing a cowgirl outfit, including hat and guns, and proceeds to blast her surroundings.
  • She hikes up her toga and runs off the dias after seeing a mouse on it in the film adaptation of The Mouse That Roared. This footage is repeated in reverse at the end of the movie.
  • From 1975 to 1981 they were apparently trying to transition to a stylized torch logo that resembled a sunburst. Unlike Warner Bros., however (see below), they never got as far as dropping their iconic plate entirely, and after Coca-Cola bought Columbia in 1982, the Torch Burst (just like all of the flat, abstract logos of the era) was retired.
    • The technology to do this by computer didn't exist in 1976; the Torch Burst logo is all backlit cel animation and rostrum camera tricks (specifically the slit-scanned "light ray sparkles" and the zoom up on the torch). The 1982 logo recycles the sparkles and part of the animation.
    • The abstract logo was resurrected in Superbad, but additional text has been added reading "A Sony Pictures Entertainment Company", and the background becomes yellow instead of black when the Torch Burst appears.
• CTV The CTV logo consists of a red sphere, a blue cube and a green cone. This (With a C instead of a G) is usually shown after programs shown on CTV, with it's familiar sound which is similiar to a loon. Sometimes when going to a commercial during a show, they'll show the logo along with stars of the show that's on.
• The Curiosity Company: The production company, owned by Matt Groening himself, behind Futurama as well as the Christmas Special Olive the Other Reindeer. Its logo displays the name together with the first image (and accompanying sound) of the short film A Study in Wet, made by Groening's late father.
• DNA Productions: Animators of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron and The Ant Bully, a tropical beach scene (with double-helix palm trees) is shown and then a CGI three eyed chimp pops up waving at the viewer and says "Hi! I'm Paul!"
  • The Jimmy Neutron Pilot from 1998, "Runaway Rocketboy", has a traditionally animated purple cat-like creature instead.
  • At least once as a spoof on themselves they had the chimp say the "Hi! I'm Paul!" backwards.
    • A couple other gags were having the chimp say "¡Hola! ¡Yo soy Pablo!" and having two chimps ("Hi! We're Paul!").
  • A more recent variation shows a vacant beach, with a worried voice-over saying "Where's Paul?"
• DiC: Producers of children's programming, including the North American dub of Sailor Moon. Their signoff is popularly known as "The Kid in Bed." Used from 1987-2001, this animated logo starts with a kid and his dog sleeping in a bed and then transitions to a starry sky in which a silver three-D "DiC" appears. In some versions, a child's voice then says the name of the company; in others, an ethereal chorus says it. Its earliest versions were reputed to be among the scariest signoffs used on television due to the darkness of the sequence, the sudden appearance of the company logo, and the creepy music; a revision in 1990 reportedly minimized the spookiness.
  • The first DiC logos featured the original logo without the 'i' dotted; some of the cast would then get this fixed; each version had its custom music. The Littles would put a button there (with the tail end of the show's theme -- "You can't stop a little 'cause the Littles don't stop!"); Inspector Gadget would skate by, then have his mallet malfunction and smash a dot in (with appropriate property damage around the impact; customized music similar to the theme was heard with a "boing" effect when the hammer hit).
  • The acronym of the company was pronounced as in French; i.e., "deek". Sure to get a "hunh?" from monolingual English-speakers, it also would add to the spookiness. It was also a shout out to DiC co-founder Andy Heyward's father, Louis "Deke" Heyward, who himself worked in the television business as vice president in charge of development for Jack Barry Productions.
  • And don't EVER bring up "The Incredible World of DiC" around a closing logo fan.
  • Actually, the original was known as the "vortex" and was used from 1984-1986.
• DreamWorks and Dreamworks Animation: A Tom Sawyer-ish boy on a crescent moon.
  • The Dreamworks Animation variant begins with the boy floating up to the moon on colorful balloons, then letting go of the balloons, which fly up and pop to create the letters of the logo. It is also notable because the music that plays is the unofficial theme of Dreamworks Animation, "Fiona's Theme".
  • At the opening for Bee Movie Barry B. Benson comes along and pops the guy's balloons and sends him plummenting. Kung Fu Panda eschews the fishing boy for a weasel in traditional Chinese dress who runs some distance and leaps up to the moon to fish. In Madagascar 2, the boy is mugged on the moon by the penguins who want his pole. In Monsters vs. Aliens, a UFO from Earth vs. the Flying Saucers abducts the boy with a tractor beam, flies away as the film begins to melt.
  • Those last few were for the DreamWorks Animation variant (unlike the regular DreamWorks logo, it's set in the daytime).
  • For a non-animated variant, the moon becomes The Ring for a split-second in said movie. And for another non-animated, before Transformers, the video is normal but the audio has a "robotic" filter put over it for the splashing sound effect when the boy's fishing lure hits water (in the very beginning).
  • Mousehunt actually has a musical variant - the film opens with the logo music (not heard on all DreamWorks movies) but at the end the guitar figure that opens the music is replaced by a French horn. Incidentally, the DreamWorks music was composed by none other than John Williams.
  • There were also some variations when they made games during the PS 1 era. Small Soldiers had the soldiers pushing the kid off the moon and Medal of Honor had him parachuting off or something similar.
    • And in one of the Jurassic Park games, the boy felt a tug on his line, and then was suddenly pulled off the moon, screaming. Then there was a faint swallowing sound.
    • The Lost World game for the PS 1 had the boy say, "Got something!" during the tug' then forcibly pulled off the moon. Velociraptor screeches and the game's dramatic chord plays.
  • Shrek had the "s" at the end of "Dreamworks" grow Shrek ears/horns.
  • How to Train Your Dragon had a more elaborate fishline-swinging (to exploit the 3D), the moon set against a celestial sky, and a Night Fury flying around in the background. This variant, the the Night Fury axed, became the standard logo for Dreamworks Animation henceforth.
• Epitome Pictures Uses a flaming torch to form the "T" in "EpiTome. Redesigned in 2011.
• Filmways Inc.: Most famous for producing The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Mr. Ed, and The Addams Family, Filmways (now a part of Orion Pictures Corporation) used several different signoffs. The best-known of these was used between 1961 and 1978, and features a horizontally-stretched globe against a starfield, with "A Filmways Television Presentation" paralleling the top and bottom of the globe. A voiceover stating "This has been a Filmways presentation" usually accompanied the logo, spoken by one of the stars of the show that preceded it. The most famous example came from Green Acres, with Eva Gabor saying, "This has been a Filmways presentation, dahling."
  • Filmways switched to a haunting bell toll around 1978, with the Filmways logo and several shadow copies appearing from the bottom of the screen. This was most common on early Ruby-Spears cartoons, particularly Plastic Man and Thundarr the Barbarian. Another, more obscure vanity plate showed an intense burst of light forming an attractive blue logo.
• Frederator: The company behind The Fairly OddParents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, ChalkZone, Oh Yeah Cartoons, Fanboy and Chum Chum and Adventure Time. For all but the last two shows, bits of metal are hammered onto a blue background, forming a circle of metal, and "A Frederator Incorporated Production" logo flies into the circle. Then, a woman shouts, "FREDERATOR!"
  • On Fanboy and Chum Chum and early episodes of Adventure Time, the logo shows a stop-motion robot drilling the words into a green mountain. The "FREDERATOR!!!" yell is then heard.
• Gracie Films: The "Shush Lady", first seen on The Tracey Ullman Show and later on The Simpsons, The Critic, Phenom and other series. A female theatergoer in silhouette, who silences the rest of the audience before a short music sting (thought by some to be based on Go West's hit "The King of Wishful Thinking", but the logo actually came first) and logo is shown. (This logo does not appear on cinema productions made by Gracie Films - with the exception, appropriately enough, of The Simpsons Movie.) In the Treehouse of Horror eps, the shush is replaced by a scream, and a horror-organ version of the music sting is played. Occasionally someone, such as Abraham Simpson, would be rambling on at length throughout the whole credits sequence, and when the vanity plate came on, the woman would shush at the appointed time, and the rambling voice finally cut off, audibly contrite.
  • Other musical variants have included a marching band ("Lisa The Greek"), a mariachi combo followed by a shout of "Ole!" ("Kamp Krusty"), a series of gunshots followed by the thud of a body hitting the ground ("Marge Simpson In 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'"), and a digeridoo ("Bart Vs. Australia").
  • In "Bart Star", Homer (who was the little league football team trainer in this episode) reads the credits like a coach cutting players from the team (well, except for Joe Namath). When the "shush" comes, he goes: "You're cut too, shushy!"
  • "The Old Man And The Key" parodied the Filmways logo (cf.) by having Lisa say (a la Ellie May Clampett) "This has been a Gracie Films pray-sen-tay-shun."
  • "The Mansion Family" had Homer crying over the end credits due to how rich the people named in the credits are. When the lady shushes him, he responds with "Don't shush me, you rich bastard!" (On UK broadcasts, the last three words have a tendency to be cut - at least on Sky.)
  • "Brother's Little Helper" had a wimpy sounding army cadet who after the shush responds "Aw, why'd you have to shush? You ruined the whole show!"
• Greenwalt Productions from David Greenwalt of Buffy, Angel, Jake 2.0 and others, uses a literal vanity license plate on a motorhome as its vanity plate.
• Guntzelman Sullivan Marshall: The producers of Growing Pains and Just the Ten of Us used a logo depicting a man falling off the roof of a house at night and screaming.
• Hanna-Barbera: Founded in 1957 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera after MGM's animation studios closed, the creators of many fondly remembered cartoons such as The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Wacky Races. One of their first closing logos following the purchase of the studio by Taft Broadcasting was 1968's "Zooming HB", a rapidly zooming HB in screen-filling letters, which, in 1974, was replaced with the silent "Rainbow HB", a bunch of lines reading "HANNA-BARBERA" that disappeared and became a big, rainbow-colored HB. In 1979, this was replaced by the famous "Swirling Star" logo, later reworked as the "Swirling Star" in 1986.
  • In the early '90s, they dropped the Star altogether (at least in Vanity Plate form) after the studio's purchase by Turner Broadcasting. It was replaced by a script "Hanna-Barbera" (introduced in 1988), which was combined with pictures of H-B characters in rectangles (usually the ones from the preceding show), along with H-B sound effects in the background. They took this a step further in 1994, with CG animated logos with Hanna-Barbera characters in motion. There were two versions, comedy and action, the latter best known for its accidental presence at the end of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?'s mid-'90s prints. When Hanna-Barbera was wound down to little more than Cartoon Network's original programming unit in the late '90s, the early '90s static logos were revisited, except with ovals instead of rectangles. There are versions of these where the logo irises out and the Cartoon Network logo zooms up in its place.
• Jackhole Productions: Founded by Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Carolla and Daniel Kellison. Producers of The Man Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Andy Milonakis Show and Crank Yankers, among others. The logo originally showed a goofy animated donkey situated in the "O" of the title and yelling "hee haw!" but later version played a few notes from "La Cucaracha" as the donkey jumped down into the crook of the "J" and yelled "Yokozuna!" In a later season of The Man Show, Jimmy and Adam introduced an idea concocted by one of their friends: sitting on the face of a sleeping buddy, giving him the rudest of awakenings. The friend who did that screamed "Yokozuna!" as he made the face-plant, thus coining the name.
  • In closing for Jimmy Kimmel Live, the donkey was branded on the butt, causing it to jump into the O before falling with the letter around his neck, then it brays.
• Jim Henson Company: Used to have a metallic 2-D Kermit head that shrunk into a buzzing point of light which produced Henson's signature logo. This was replaced by one of Kermit operating a movie camera (with the logo on the side), which zoomed out on a camera platform. Then the platform slammed to a halt and Animal's voice said "Sorry!" Sadly, they can't use these any more because the Muppets are now Disney properties.
• John Charles Walters Company: Founded by former MTM writers, this company's only product of note was the sitcom Taxi. "Walters" didn't actually exist, but the plate shows the back of a man (portrayed by series producer Eb. Weinberger) leaving his office for the night. His off-screen female secretary cheerfully says "Goodnight, Mr. Walters!" and he just grunts in reply.
• Klasky-Csupo: Animation studio best known for Rugrats, actually had three plates. One in use from 1991-1998, which had various objects forming the letters in "KLASKY" and scribbles writing in "CSUPO". It was retired as of The Rugrats Movie in favor of one considered scarier: it starts with purple static being overtaken by black ink, followed by a hand dropping magazine-clipping-looking facial features onto it. The mouth says (in a robotic voice) "Class-key-chew-poe" (the company name's proper pronunciation) while pieces of the company's logo come out of it. They arrange themselves to form the logo, and the logo is all that remains after the face disappears. Another one made its only appearance on Rugrats Go Wild: a city skyline with a green sky has a rooster who wakes up, screaming "WAKE... UP!!!", before the Sun gets brighter and brings forth the Klasky-Csupo logo (it looks different than it does in the other logos; it's an off-kilter print version which dates to at least 1999).
• Langley Productions: Three variants exist: the first was the early '80s Barbour/Langley Logo which featured the names in hot pink sliding in from the sides of the screen with an accompanying tune that creeped many of us for years. Fortunately, once Langley took over the graphics changed to where "Langley" would either slide or form in with a much more awesome Blues-Rock riff. Currently, it's a different but still awesome riff with a flash revealing the logo.
• Looney Tunes: Thaaathaathat's all folks!
• Mark VII Limited: Jack Webb's company, made his Police Procedural shows such as Dragnet, Adam-12, and Emergency (which was actually a Fire Department Procedural). The logo consisted of a pair of hands holding a hammer and chisel; the hammer strikes the chisel producing roman numeral VII, with logo showing Mark VII Limited. The hands were actually those of Jack Webb himself.
• MGM: Studio mascot Leo the Lion became so famous that he eventually got his own animated sitcom, The Lionhearts. The Chuck Jones chapters of Tom and Jerry started with Leo growling, then fading to Tom meowing.
  • The distinctive Leo the Lion opening was spoofed as early as 1935 in the trailer for the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera, which had him shifting to Groucho and Chico moving their mouths to the sound of his roar, followed by Harpo trying to but failing, and using his horn instead.

• Miramax Films: A Dramatic Landfall Shot quickly revealing the Manhattan skyline at evening, then dissolving to the Miramax logo.
• Mohawk Productions: The company behind The Oblongs and The Drew Carey Show featured a logo with an ultrasound of a baby who giggles. This is accompanied by a quick drum beat.
• MTM Productions/Enterprises: Company founded by Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore (for whom it was named), it produced a vast outpouring of quality television, starting with the classic The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Its logo, well-known to several generations of TV viewers, was Mimsie the MTM kitten, a parody of Leo the MGM lion. In Mimsie's initial appearances at the end of The Mary Tyler Moore Show she simply meowed, but other MTM productions often added animated overlays and/or new sound tracks that were specific to the show. See the long list of such variants at Logo Joke.
  • The original "Meow" logo was also used on such series as The Bob Newhart Show and WKRP in Cincinnati.
• Mutant Enemy Productions: Creators of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse. The signoff is comprised of the words "Mutant Enemy" obviously hand-drawn in magic marker with a cardboard cut-out of a lurching zombie, also done in magic marker, crossing in front of it as Joss Whedon's voice intones "Grrr... argh."

The phrase "Mutant Enemy" comes from the song "And You And I" by Yes, and was the name Joss Whedon gave his first manual typewriter. The signoff itself was, according to Whedon, improvised at the last minute when he and his crew were told they needed one—hence its crude and simple appearance, which has only contributed to its popularity.

Special versions were seen several times on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, listed on Logo Joke (again), and most of which are on YouTube.

• • Robot Chicken also parodied this once when, after the regular Vanity Plate, the Mutant Enemy zombie starts attacking various people, and then it pulled out to show it was just Joss Whedon screwing around.
• NBC: Originally just the letters NBC being lit up one-by-one to the network's three-tone jingle. When it switched to color, it switched to a flamboyant, rainbow-tailed peacock (which later became simplified so it would be easier to draw.) During the 1960s, they experimented with what is referred to as the "NBC Snake"—the letters "NBC" written using a continuous line. In the late '70s and early '80s they used a big "N".
  • The three-note jingle, by the way, is "G-E-C" -- an Easter Egg dating back to when the network was owned by General Electric Corporation.
• Paramount Pictures: A mountain surrounded by stars (usually 24, in reference to the number of big movie actors they had signed in the Silent Age of Hollywood), also known as "Majestic Mountain" or "Paramountain".
• Paramount Television: This company started out from the shadows of Desilu Productions, which had a reasonably pleasant vanity plate featuring several colored circles coming together to combine the studio logo. However, that all changed when Gulf & Western purchased Desilu in 1967 and turned it into a television branch of its film studio Paramount. The old Desilu logo was abandoned shortly thereafter and replaced with a simplified blue and white version of the classic Paramount "Majestic Mountain" signature. That placeholder lasted a good 9 months before being replaced with a segmented blue and white rectangle wrapped inside a yellow border. The camera then zooms toward the right side of the rectangle, which contains the simplified Paramount logo. In 1969, there was a slight tweak in the logo. The border became scarlet red and the logo frame blue over white. This variation was accompanied by a brief Dominic Frontiere theme known to some fans as "Closet Killer" (because of it sounding as if someone is leaping out of a closet to do something violent). Although not as publicized as the Screen Gems or Viacom logos, some individuals consider the Paramount logo to be among the most frightening of vanity plates due to its fast movement, stark colors, and a chilling orchestral accompaniment. Watch it here. The version of the logo used in the 1970s and 1980s was only slightly less scary.
  • Now defunct, retired in favour of CBS Television Studios/CBS Productions (just as Touchstone Television is now ABC Studios).
• PBS: The network had several memorable plates for the end of their programs from way back when it was known as NET. The bumpers started out with what some viewers considered "S from Hell" scary, and have progressively gotten less scary over time (again, YMMV). Judge for yourself with this montage of bumpers.
  • A history of Children's Television Workshop logos.
• Public TV For East Tennessee: Until the mid-1990s, the logo for WSJK (now WETP) was a stylized Two known as the "Ugly TWO" and the logo for WKOP was a 3-D number 15 known as the "'70s-style 15". The Ugly TWO was used as a station ID by itself in the late '80s as well as with the '70s-style 15 in the early to mid '90s. Both logos were used in the sign-on and sign-off screen until late 2002.
• Pixar: The studio's mascot, Luxo Jr., hops across the stage, then jumps onto the letter I in the name, flattens it, then looks at the audience in embarrassment. Taken from Pixar's first short, in which Luxo Jr. jumps onto and deflates a ball in the same way. At the end of each film, the sequence is repeated, with the light snapping off or fading out after Luxo Jr. faces the camera.
  • A variation comes after the closing credits of WALL-E: after Luxo Jr. squashes the I and turns to the camera, its light bulb burns out. WALL-E rolls into view, changes the bulb, pats Luxo Jr. on the "head", and starts to roll away. However, WALL-E then knocks over the letter R in Pixar, and is forced to take its place by bending his body into the shape of an R. Luxo then turns once more to the camera and the lights go out.
  • Revised as of Up and the Toy Story rereleases (although possibly just for the 3D versions). The same basic scene but starting with the camera facing from the left on the letters which are now shown to have depth. The camera rotates around back to the front as Luxo hops in.
  • College Humor has a parody of this. [1]
• R&D TV: Company formed to produce the new Battlestar Galactica, its only show as of this writing. Its signoff features versions of Ron Moore and David Eick ("R" and "D") animated in a style reminiscent of Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, taking turns mutilating each other. Thanks to some twisted soul somewhere on the Net, you can see a collected set of these clips here and here, or check out this article from Wired magazine.
• The Rank Organisation: Naked guy hitting a gong.
• Rankin/Bass Productions: Creators of numerous well-remembered animated Christmas specials in the '60s and '70s (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer being the first and arguably most popular of these.) Their classic '60s-'70s logo has an upright rectangle and two circles popping up to form a stylized overlapping "R" and "B" over a white background, accompanied by the words "A Rankin Bass Production", as a brief musical theme with bongos, piano and flute swells to a crescendo and Sting.
• Renaissance Pictures: Sam Raimi's company, and masters of the Nineties Adventure Show. It's short lived first logo, appearing only on M.A.N.T.I.S., consisted of the company's name hovering over Earth, as the sun rises behind it and makes a "whoosh" sound. It was dispensed of by the end of 1994 for a more infamous one. At the end of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Cleopatra 2525, Jack of All Trades and Legend of the Seeker, viewers are treated to a sequence of a Mona Lisa-like portrait being ripped in half by an unseen force and thrusted toward the viewer, accompanied by lightning bolts and eerie chanting. After that, a lightning bolt causes the company's name (fashioned differently from before) to appear. Oddly, despite the logo's scary/bizarre subject matter, it was retained on FOX's kiddie version of Herc's show, Young Hercules. A shortened version exists on the short-lived American Gothic, which excises the Mona Lisa sequence.
• Reveille Productions: Co-producer of such shows as The Office and Ugly Betty. A soldier is shown playing a trumpet in white silhouette.
• Saban Entertainment/Saban Brands: Best known for Power Rangers. Its first logo was a black planet with rings around it with "SABAN" on the rings in a Pac-Man-like lettering style, with "PRODUCTIONS" below that. Five lines are on the bottom left hand side of the planet. Another plate was adopted in 1988, which featured a white marble square with a round hole in it, with "SABAN" in the hole, and, depending on the version, "ENTERTAINMENT" or "INTERNATIONAL" below the hole. A gold plate spins in from the left of the screen while the square comes in from the right. The plate affixes itself into the hole, and three black lines draw themselves on the bottom left corner of the plate. The final plate, used from 1996 to 2002, features children in odd-looking clothing lying on the ground, which fades to show them holding a large, golden cloth, which fades to show them floating above an Earth globe with yellow water and red and green land, over a sky background. The children are holding balls of various colors, and golden light rushes around the globe until the globe and kids disappear, with the light forming a simplified version of the logo from 1988, with "S A B A N" below it. This reveals that the clouds in the sky are being sucked into the center. The current logo for Saban Brands, introduced with Power Rangers Samurai, has a red ribbon in space flying to form the 1996-2002 logo, set to a guitar riff.

• Screen Gems: Had several plates, the best known being "The S From Hell". Also known as the "Filmstrip S", this logo was first used in 1965 and lasted 9 seasons on television. Two lengths of film, one in the foreground moving back and one in the background moving forward, meet in the middle of the screen and wrap around a circular area in which a dot appears, forming a stylized "S" as the text "SCREEN GEMS" appears and expands. A short musical motif consisting of six ascending notes followed by two upward arpeggios (changed in 1970 to three notes and two arpeggios) accompanied it. For some reason the combination of the simple animation and the strange music were considered frightening by many viewers, particularly children, some of whom have reported nightmares inspired by it. Some websites accord it the scariest production logo ever made; you can see it in its arguably scary glory on YouTube. The "S from Hell" was retired in 1974 when Screen Gems was renamed "Columbia Pictures Television", although CPT continued to use the same music behind a new logo for several years. The "S" logo was revived in 1999 as the "S from Heaven", which can be seen here.
  • The S from Hell is so infamous, it has spawned a mocumentary-horror style film entry for the Sundance Film Festival. Yeah, they went there.
• Sony Pictures Television: Successor to Columbia-TriStar Television, which was infamous for its ubiquitous "Boxes of Boredom" logo. Sony Pictures Television's logo first appeared in 2002, and is nicknamed the "Bars of Boredom" (it has achieved the same ubiquity the Boxes had, mainly by replacing logos on older shows, which the Boxes did as well). The omnipresence of the Boxes and Bars of Boredom as well as Sony's plastering have made them The Scrappy of logo fans. The logo consists of "SONY PICTURES TELEVISION" zoomed up to the screen in front of a very bright light. The words zoom out as the light condenses itself into a symbol featuring twelve bars with the light in them. The more common short version doesn't start with the extreme close-up on the company's name, and the music is a majestic, triumphant five-note fanfare. The longer version prefaces it with a "fluttering" sound, played by a piano.
• Starry Night Productions: Reinhold Weege's production company for Night Court has an animated logo showing a star flashing brightly (accompanied by a loud clapping sound) and fading, revealing a blacked-out nighttime Chicago skyline. The loud clap is followed by an elongated Scare Chord on electric organ and the sound of a man laughing heartily, not to say maniacally...
• Stephen J. Cannell Productions: Producers of such shows as The A-Team, Riptide, Wiseguy, Hunter, and 21 Jump Street. Live action footage of Cannell himself at a typewriter in a well-appointed study. The camera then does an Orbital Shot from his face to his back, at which point he pulls the sheet of paper out of the typewriter and throws it over his head. The live paper turns into an animated sheet, which floats downward onto an animated stack, the top sheets of which curl upward and form a "C". The text "Stephen J. Cannell Productions" or "Cannell Entertainment Inc." then appears above.
  • It was updated through the years, with his Emmy and other awards added to his office among other things. In earlier versions he was smoking a pipe. You can see all but a couple of the versions in this compilation video on Youtube.
    • When he died, Castle paid him tribute.

Stephen J. Cannell. Colleague. Mentor. Friend. We'll miss you,pal.

• Stoopid Monkey: Seth Green's production shingle. The plate at the end of Robot Chicken until Season 5 was different each time, with a still-frame cartoon monkey engaging in some reckless behavior, with a hooting sound effect, while Seth says, "Stupid monkey." Now the show uses a neon cartoon monkey head with the same voice over for every episode.
• Ten Thirteen Productions: Best known for The X-Files, and Millennium. A young boy's voice declares proudly "I made this!" over the sound of an old-fashioned movie projector, while the logo appears on a black screen. (The boy is Nathan Couturier, son of X-Files supervising sound editor, Thierry Couturier. The company name itself refers to the birthday of producer Chris Carter.)
  • This was mercilessly mocked by Stewart Lee and Richard Herring in their BBC 2 series This Morning With Richard Not Judy
• THX: The logo fades in, accompanied by the famous crescendo frequently called the Deep Note - which, if you were a kid in the 80s and 90s first hearing it, may have been more like a Brown Note. A lengthy but more pleasant variant, involving fantastic sounds and music created by plantlife in the shape of the logo, has been used for some family-oriented movies, but the old version is still used for more serious films.
• UBU Productions: Of Family Ties and Spin City fame. A photo of producer Gary David Goldberg's black Labrador Retriever, Ubu Roi, is shown holding a frisbee. Goldberg himself says the line, "Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog.", which is followed by a quick, single bark.
  • Robot Chicken parodied this right beside their own vanity plates with a similar looking photo of a toy dog. Seth Green says, "Sit, Ubu, sit. Bad dog!", before the screen cuts to black, a shotgun sounds, and a dog whimpers.
• Underdog Productions: The company behind American Dad features a live-action security guard who smiles at the camera, gives a thumbs up, and says "Bye, have a great/wonderful/beautiful time!"
• Universal: Has has several vanity plates, all of them a variation on a globe with the word "UNIVERSAL" or the phrase "A UNIVERSAL PICTURE" in front of it. The most famous was the "Zooming Globe", used from 1963-1990, which headed many of Universal's blockbusters; it basically had the camera zooming up on Earth with spotlight "rings" forming around the globe, as the company name (spelled out in huge Futura letters) faded in. Universal inherited its television division from its longtime parent MCA, which started Revue Studios in 1951 as a TV production arm; after MCA bought Universal in 1962, Revue became Universal Television and started using the Zooming Globe itself, something that didn't change until the TV version of the 75th Anniversary logo premiered in 1991. Its latest version is the first few notes of the new Universal fanfare over the newest version of the logo.
• Viacom: The first incarnation of Viacom (now CBS Corporation) had many:
  • The first, used from 1971 to 1976, is commonly known as "Pinball". It featured the V-IA-COM segments of the company name sliding in from the right, in that order, as the background changes colors. VIACOM zooms back to reveal "A" and "PRESENTATION" on each side of it.
  • Its successor, nicknamed "The V of Doom", was used between 1976 to 1986. It can occasionally still be seen at the end of old prints of CBS programs, although for the most part it has been supplanted by the 1995 Paramount Television logo. It began with the phrase "A Viacom Presentation" zooming in from the center of the screen, followed by a large purple V which fills most of the screen. Accompanying this is a five-note motif played by synthesized horns with a building timpani crescendo. As with the Screen Gems "S from Hell" logo, some viewers actually found the whole sequence frightening. (As seen in dubious glory on YouTube.) The fright might be related to the fact that for years, this was seen following shows like The Twilight Zone and Tales from the Darkside.
  • Its successor, in use from 1986 to 1990, is commonly known as the "V of Steel". It started with the screen divided into a purple half and a silver half. The silver half turned itself upward, revealing itself to be the "V" from the previous logo, redone in CGI. The word "Viacom" (in the same typeface as before) fell down and landed under the V.
  • A completely new logo, which goes by the nickname "Wigga-Wigga", was used from 1990 to 1999. It starts with a V (different from before) over a blue background, which zig-zags (and makes "wigga-wigga" sounds, hence the nickname) and forms the word "VIACOM", which is then spoken by a booming male voice (rumored to be Don LaFontaine). (This logo was designed by Chermayeff and Geismar, also responsible for the Screen Gems "S from Hell" and the 1986 NBC Peacock). It was carried over to Viacom's final plate, used from 1999 to 2004. The "VIACOM" letters were made of glass and zoomed out over a blue background with the letterforms in it. "PRODUCTIONS" was under it, along with a Paramount byline.
  • Parodied with AllieRX87's closing logo (aka the "A of Doom")
• VID: A Russian TV studio best known for becoming Memetic Mutation with the Russians.
• Vin Di Bona Productions: Best known for America's Funniest Home Videos. The plate, which endured many updates over 21 years of use, consists of the "Vin Di Bona" script spinning around and unfolding. "PRODUCTIONS" will appear afterwards, though since the 2000s PRODUCTIONS has unfolded along with the rest of the name. This fall, the logo was dramatically revised, with the background turned red and the script redone. The music has always been a bizarre, creepy synth ditty attempting to sound cheerful, though the new revision saw it greatly toned down.
• Walt Disney Pictures: Disney didn't really have a consistent one until 1985, when an animated, 2D, segmented (like many other logos of the era) Sleeping Beauty Castle made its debut in front of The Black Cauldron. It was revised in 1990, when the purple gradient inside the castle was removed. This may be the only example of a theatrical film company to use a stylized logo that stuck, in part because they had no iconic logo until then. This logo was finally retired in 2006, when an elaborate computer animated sequence that switched out the Sleeping Beauty Castle for the Cinderella Castle debuted in front of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (this version was done by visual effects company Weta Digital). Pixar movies prior to WALL-E use a (different) CGI variation of the castle. (Coincidentally, all three of these films are darker than your usual Disney flick, albeit for completely different reasons.)
  • Disney Animation now has its own logo, perhaps to differentiate from Pixar films, featuring the opening clip from Steamboat Willie, with Mickey whistling the tune and steering the boat, going from initial sketch to finished animation as it plays out.
• Warner Brothers: While it consists of a basic reveal of the logo, the colour of said logo and the style of music used is genre appropriate. Harry Potter movies have it in brown for example, flying past the camera. If it's not tied in to the movie it's with, it'll usually be accompanied by "As Time Goes By".
  • The Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Family logos have Bugs Bunny leaning on the logo (sometimes preceded by him coming out from behind it) and chewing a carrot. The usual fanfare is "Merrily We Roll Along", while through the '90s and early 2000s the animated TV series had the final bars of the Animaniacs theme ("Those are the facts!").
  • In the '70s and early '80s the Warner Brothers logo went from the "WB" shield to a stylized "W". It reverted back to the "WB" shield in 1984.
  • The Warner Bros. Television logo was generally static, with the exception of the 50th Anniversary variant. Had the anniversary banner not been flowing in a direction opposite to the one the shield was travelling in, the logo might not be static today.
  • 1986's Follow That Bird showed an animated Big Bird inflating a large "W", which rose to form an animated version of the WB shield. "Sesame Street is brought to you today by the letters 'W' and 'B'!"
  • After WB's absorption of New Line Cinema, New Line films starting with The Rite begin with a basic shot of the WB shield, whose golden parts then seperate and fly past the camera to a night skyline to assemble into the New Line Cinema logo, now in gold. The excess parts still fly past the New Line logo.
• WGBH: PBS member station in Boston, Massachusetts and the most prolific producer of PBS shows nationwide. Arguably best known for their two logos, the second of which has not been replaced since 1978. They both use the same "music," a terrifying synthfest. Watch at your own risk. The 1972-78 logo. The 1978-present logo.
  • Well, at least they're Genre Savvy enough to not play the synthfest when the logo is displayed on certain programming like those for young children. I.e. in Arthur, when the closing theme runs into the Vanity Plate.
• WNET: On a black screen, we see the New York skyline in a radar, with "From WNET New York" in the center.
• Where's Lunch?: Best known for Everybody Loves Raymond, this production company's plate has a placemat with the words "Where's Lunch?" on it, being covered up by... well, lunch: a different meal each episode.
• Williams Street: Producer of much of Adult Swim's original lineup. Their plate is a blurry picture of the Williams Street studio, with a low tympani roll and a few ominous gongs. (The audio is actually ripped off of Mark VII Limited's plate from the 1960s above.) Since the 2010s, the plate is followed by a split-second (sometimes longer) flash of a skull and crossbones image (with the Cartoon Network logo for its teeth) on a white background, with a voice speaking or shouting, "Skull!"
  • The "Skull" card following the program Squidbillies customarily has the voice of a character from the series saying the word.
  • At the end of Robot Chicken commentaries, the commentators often wait and shout out "Skull!" along with the voice.
  • Originally, the plate was for "Ghost Planet Industries", way back when Space Ghost Coast to Coast and its spin-off, Cartoon Planet, were their only shows in production.
• David Letterman's Worldwide Pants logo is as simple as it gets. However, it's mostly remembered for the random funny non-sequitur phrase that is said while the logo is shown.
• Wolf Films: Dick Wolf's production company for the Law and Order franchise. An illustration of a wolf howling at a full moon is shown, accompanied by the sound of the wolf howling and crickets chirping.
• WWE: Front and back Vanity Plates. The Vanity Plate at the beginning of their programming is a 30-second montage of soundbites and blipverts of moments throughout their history. The Vanity Plate at the end is a simple light panning over the WWE logo. Both Vanity Plates were notably absent from ECW on Sci-Fi, a holdover from the early days of the Revival when WWE was trying to separate the new ECW from the other two "brands" as much as possible. WWE's front Vanity Plate has since been parodied in the form of Botchamania's opening sequence.

Anime

Studio Ghibli's vanity plate, as taken from The Borrower Arrietty.

In Anime series, the Vanity Plate appears before the beginning of the program, not after the end. There are frequently several of them, each from a different production company that collaborated in making the series. It is rare for the actual animation studio to display a Vanity Plate—unlike in North America, the animation studios are separate companies from the production companies that put series together. Instead, the studio will have its logo discreetly included in the ending credits.

That said, anime films tend to have vanity plates, most ones being a static image featuring an iconic character from its production company. Films generally have a stronger association with its production company than series. Thus, Studio Ghibli—who focused exclusively on film production from 1985 until 2014—has a notable one featuring one of their best-known characters, Totoro.

• Gainax: The company does not have a standard vanity plate. Sometimes their name is written in plain text. Other times their name, along with others, appear with the rest of vanity plates. In The End of Evangelion, their name is in the bottom right corner, being written in a sketchy white style redrawn every frame. The vanity plate quickly disappears after a few frames, giving way to the other companies.
• Kyoto Animation: Their vanity plate features Earth in the background. Blue ocean waves appear on the bottom half of the screen, fading out towards the top. In the bottom left, a circle inside a circle is surrounded by six teardrop like shapes, with the words "Kyoto Animation" and a link to their website (http://kyotoanimation.co.jp). It dissolves into the orange words "Kyoto Animation" against a plain white background. This Vanity Plate is rare, only appearing in their films.
• Studio Ghibli: The vanity plate features King Totoro, with Chibi Totoro perched on top. The vanity plate is set against a blue background, with Totoro outlined in black and text outlined in white. The text states "スタジオジブリ作品", "Studio Ghibli['s] work", with the corresponding English text "STUDIO GHIBLI" written underneath. The vanity plate is usually followed by a list of companies which helped produce and fund the film. It is always the first, and often only, vanity plate in their works.
• Studio Ponoc: Just like Ghibli, they're another company who tend to focus on film productions. Their vanity plate is on a white background, and features Mary Smith from their first production Mary and the Witch's Flower. Under Mary is the words STUDIO PONOC, with a red clock face in the first "O" in PONOC—reflective of their "new start".

Networks

• Until 1 January 1988, the UK's various ITV companies put vanity plates in front of their shows. These are referred to as "front caps", representing the companies that also broadcast the ITV network, and usually doubled as station ID's locally.
  • ABC: Began with the station logo, a triangle with an embossed pattern, zooming on screen, parts of the triangle wiped down from the top of the screen on top of the letters "A", "B" and "C" in either a serif or sans-serif logo, before the station logo resolves from the smaller triangles.
  • Anglia: A rotating statue of a silver knight on horseback carrying a flag with "Anglia" engraved on it, accompanied by a refrain from Handel's Water Music. An extra-long version appeared as the station sign-on every morning. After 29 years, it was replaced 1988 by an animated flag with an A made up of different coloured triangles which was briefly used an animated end vanity plate. This "A" was designed by Lambie-Nairn (who also designed the current logo of The BBC), and the original "flag" ident was used until 1999.
  • ATV: With "front caps" known as "zooms", these mainly featured the station logo zooming into centre position on screen. As colour dawned for the station in 1969, the "Colour Zoom" sequence changed to a "colour chart" of red, green and blue circles morphing together and the yellow station logo appearing in a burst of colour along with a bombastic jingle.
  • Border: For most of the "front cap" era, a still silent logo with two lines joining together as one inside the shape of a TV, an abstract representation of the broadcast region. Known in fan circles as "the chopsticks in a bowl".
  • Central: Started off as in 1982 as a sphere which split open with a ray of light to resolve as a white ball with the left part shadowed in a crescent shape. Replaced with a different "sphere" in 1983 with the crescent part of the sphere in the colours of the rainbow. The well-loved "Cake", with segments cut into the sphere, first appeared in promos and idents in the region in 1985, before replacing the sphere as an short-lived animated endcap, in proper Vanity Plate fashion in 1988.
  • Channel: Started off as six hexagons appearing one by one on screen, one of with the icon of a lion. Then began the letters "CTV" made up of stripes, zooming in from centre.
  • Grampian: Began as a hilly scene reforming into the station's St Andrew's flag logo. Then became a sub-ATV morphing of components of the station logo when the station began colour broadcasts. Later became one of the first CGI frontcaps in the ITV network, with balls and diamonds tumbling around the screen before the station logo resolved.
  • Granada: Famously silent throughout the "front cap" era, the first logo featured a sometimes-animated northwards pointing arrow with the slogan "From the North" above the station name. After a brief flirtation with using just the word "Granada" underlined in the late 1960s, the station introduced its classic logo on the cusp of switching to colour in 1969 - the yellow G with a north-pointing arrow.
  • HTV: The first infamous logo used monochrome cross-hatching effects to form the word "Harlech" which reportedly caused eyestrain among viewers. Thankfully, the station's decision to abbreviate the name to HTV to appease non-Welsh viewers led to a less seizure-ific "front cap", where two white diagonal lines wiped on screen and morphed to form the new station logo, dubbed "the aerial" by front cap fans. Became a CGI-fest of tumbling logo components falling into place forming the logo in 1987.
  • LWT: Beginning as the words "From London Weekend" zooming into view with a late-'60s Moog jingle, it soon evolved into the "From London Weekend" encased in a spinning circle, dubbed "the pound coin" by later generations. 1971 saw the launch of "the river", where a line made up of blue, white and orange/red stripes formed the joined-up letters "LW" on a black background; amended in 1978 for the letters to read "LWT" with the station name extended to "London Weekend Television". The station front-cap gave into the CGI era in 1986, as the stripes making up the "LWT" letters did a "folding out" effect to form the station logo. A very impressive (for its time) CGI ident was introduced in 1996, which showed three squares (one red, one white, one blue) break into a flurry of cubes, which flew down to a white smoke and formed the LWT logo (which has been amended so that the "L" is red, the "W" is white and the "T" is blue). Their final ident was introduced in 2000 (as a backlash against network-mandated idents introduced the previous year), which zoomed over and up to a video wall with the "LWT" on it, along with ITV's "hearts" idents of the era surrounding it. Much of this wall was originally tinted red, and the music was a techno theme with conspicuous beeps. In 2001, the ident was revised so that the red tint gave way to blue, and the music was revised so that the beeps were less audible.
  • Rediffusion: The company's logo, the "adastral", usually spun in its "front caps".
  • Scottish: Early "frontcaps" featured the lion rampant - a tumbling effect was used for a while which was amended to a zooming effect due to complaints. Colour saw the logo become the stylised letters "STV". 1985 saw the station update its logo to a thistle (nicknamed "Bertie Bassett" due to its resemblance to the mascot of a confectionery company) made up of grey blocks, a blue ball and a purple "top".
  • Thames: Nearly the same "front cap" used from the station's beginning in 1968 until the end of the "front cap" era - a shot of London landmarks appearing from the middle of the screen with the word "THAMES" appearing on the front, all on a blue sky with light clouds backdrop. For well-remembered humorous takes on the logo, see Logo Joke.
  • TSW: One of the quirkiest "front caps" when first seen in 1982, the full sequence saw a TV with a fuzzy signal with sprouting shoot become encased in a blue smily ball, which mutated into a set of six slimy balls, which were actually green hills from another angle, which settled into place as a blue bar and the TSW letters folded out on screen. Best to look at it for yourself to see what we're talking about. Replaced by a much more boring CGI "front cap" in 1985.
  • TVS: Using a rainbow-coloured version of the station logo, the "flower" or "shell" depending on which person from the region you talk to, which either zoomed sedatedly (on weekdays) or span with more vigour (at weekends) to settle beside the letters "TVS". Changed in 1987 to station logos in chrome-effect CGI.
  • Tyne Tees: Began as the letters "TTT" morphing from an anchor with a relevant sea-shanty style jingle and "Tyne Tees Television, Channel 8!" ID from early station announcer Adrian Cairns. The station logo changed to a yellow stacked block of letters reading "TTTV" which formed on screen first from various off-screen points, amended later to a computer-style zooming in.
  • Ulster: Started out as a The Twilight Zone style mix of dots and lines accompanied by a refrain from "The Mountains of Mourne", a piece of traditional music. Come The Troubles, the modified logo with the oscilloscope pattern on the inside of a TV screen shape was usually transmitted still and in silence. Then in 1980, along came "the lollipop" or "the telly on a stick" - a statue with the station logo made from melted silver retrieved from volatile film stock which revolved to the sound of a plinky-plonk early 1980s synth tune.
  • Westward: Made use of the station's adopted symbol, a model of the Golden Hind, which later became a real-life statue which the camera panned away from.
  • Yorkshire: A golden chevron which appeared to a few bars from a local folk tune, "On Ilkley Moor B'ah Tat". Unanimated for most of the "front cap" era, 1987 saw the "Liquid Gold" front cap, with a 3D chevron emerging from a pool of, well, gold liquid.
  • ITV (and then Channel Four) also put plates at the end of the shows ("end caps"). Archive reruns of ITV shows do not include the front caps, although they are often included in British DVD releases.
• On PBS shows until 1993, the logo of the production company (which was often a local PBS station) was also shown at the beginning instead of the end of the show.
• The CBC "exploding meatball" has been in use by the network for decades, and is as recognizable in Canada as is the Maple Leaf.

Video Games

Video games often use the "front caps" version, typically by having the plates for various companies involved in production play while the game is loading. Occasionally they're also around during the end credits, although the credits are more likely to use plain text rather than plates. Some notable examples include:

• Konami had a pretty memorable one complete with iconic "jingle" featured in the attract loop of all their arcade releases before they adopted the boring white-on-red banner logo they use today.
• Capcom's SNES-era plate had its logo fade in with an odd synth fade-in, then at the end the logo would flash to a single guitar chord. (This was mimicked in Mega Man 6, Capcom's last NES game).
  • And the Resident Evil vanity plate.
• Apogee Software had two commonly-used vanity plates: One featuring a starry background with a starburst at the bottom of the screen (as appears before Secret Agent, Crystal Caves, and Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure), and the more iconic orbital view of a planet with their company fanfare playing in the background (as appears before Duke Nukem II, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, and Wacky Wheels).
• The company Clover has a very ordinary vanity plate, a green 4-leaf clover blooming. But in Okami, one of the standard 'clean up the trashed world' activities you have to do in the game is first dig up black clovers, then bloom them into healthy green ones.
• Before the Saturn, Sega had a different version in nearly every game, typically featuring that particular game's characters or some such component. A complete listing can be accessed here.
  • Of particular note are the Sega vanity plates from the main Sega Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog games. Originally, Sonic 1 was to have a sound test screen featuring an anthropomorphic band and detailed animations; when this was scrapped, the developers decided to fill up the remaining space in the ROM by digitizing the two-note "Se-ga!" jingle from the contemporary Japanese commercials and adding it to the vanity plate. They managed to get the sound to a reasonable quality and threw it in there, and every other main-series Genesis Sonic game had the same jingle in it. It was also present in an earlier version of Sonic 3D Blast/Flickies' Island, but was replaced by the US commercials' "SEGA!" scream in the final product.
    • Sonic Mega Collection uses the old plate again as a reference. Likewise, so do trailers for the 20th anniversary crossover game Sonic Generations in regards to its history-spanning nature... but the game itself uses the "*whoosh* Sega." plate that is standard for nearly all Sega games as of the mid-2000's.
    • Beyond that hedgehog post-Sega Dreamcast, the Vocaloid Licensed Game Hatsune Miku: Project Diva uses the old plate... except that Miku is the voice here. (Of course, it's a game based on singing synthethizer computer software. You expected Sega to blow off the chance?) Likewise, the K-On! game K-On! Houkago Live (developped by the same staff as the Vocaloid games) has Aki Toyosaki doing the old plate as her K-On! character Yui.
• In Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the '80s, Activision and Harmonix replaced their typical logo plates with pixelated ones like what one might expect to see in an '80s video game. Activision kept this retro logo in Guitar Hero On Tour Decades for DS. RedOctane uses their regular logo, but since it consists primarily of a pixelated fireball to begin with, it still fit the sequence.
• Valve themselves plays ominous music over a still frame of a man's head with the rotary handle of a garden spigot grafted onto it. For the first two Half-Life games, there's a white guy with the valve replacing his eye; games from the Orange Box onwards have a bald black guy with the valve sticking out the back of his head.
  • Speaking of Valve (and Retraux), the Team Fortress 2 retraux fan game Gang Garrison 2 opens with a mock plate for "Faucet", an 8-bit rendition of Valve's plate. Except that here, someone actually opens the faucet, filling the "Faucet" logo on the bottom left with water.
• Homestar Runner fake-video game corporation Videlectrix has its surreal one of a man falling over displayed in the style of the console/computer the presented game is a pastiche of.
• LucasArts usually put their logo in the front and back. Once they got bored with the basic logo, they began doing all sorts of stuff to it, like scaring it away with a tentacle, parachuting it in, blowing it up, etcetera.
• Many flash games have vanity plates nowadays; some of the most recognizable include the Miniclip "BOOM!" logo and the Armor Games "Dueling Swords" logo.
• "EA Games. <whispers> Challenge everything."
  • "E.A. Sports. It's in the game."
• nVidia has had a few vanity plates over the years, typically showcasing the company logo and their motto of "The way it's meant to be played". There was at least one such vanity plate that was unique to the game that showed it (Unreal Tournament 2004 in this case).

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This page was a presentation of All The Tropes.