A Day at the Bizarro

Anime andManga

If the series had a single serious bone in its body, any single episode ofExcel Saga could count as this. But even in this context, the final episode, produced with the express intention ofbreaking as much of Japan's S&P broadcast code as possible,definitely lives up to its title of "Going Too Far".

The originalTenchi Muyo! TV series made some waves at the time of its original broadcast by taking a couple of weeks off from the storyline to air a series of "alternate-universe" vignettes starring the main characters in very different settings (one of which actuallyspun off intoits own franchise). Definitely the first time this trope had ever been used in anime, and possibly a first for Japanese television as a whole!

The episode ofOuran High School Host Club wherein young!Haruhi suddenly steps into a pastiche ofAlice in Wonderland with characters from the show in all the major roles. Of course, this is reallyAll Just a Dream, but surprisingly, the entire episode is not only entirely in continuity but it actually is important for developing several of the characters. EspeciallyHaruhi's mom, who doesn't appear in person in any other episode. Because she's dead.

Neon Genesis Evangelion doesn't stray into this territory for the first half of its run, but by Episode 16, the story turnschaotic,savage, andinsanelysurreal, thenjust plain cruel. Just how bad depends on what happens in these episodes. The last two, especially, send the viewer into a conundrum of questions. But...End Of Evangelion takes all the above to theultimateextreme.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, similar to the above, seems relatively reasonable about the laws of reality until theTime Skip hits. Then, it audaciously tosses outevery single rule of reality (even ones God is supposed to govern) for the most epic and far-fetchedFinal Battle you can handle!It takes place in a pocket universe with twogalatic-sized mechs made of near-infinite energy, the heroes forming a series ofMeta Mecha with an already planetary-size mech inside theirs, with a city-sized mech inside that one, housing a normal-sizeHumongous Mecha that runs on fighting spirit. The battle escalates to materializing impossibly huge-scale weapons, spitting outbig bangs, throwinggalaxies, and telling every single law of reality to shove it up their crock!!! Then cameLagann-hen... wherein we learned tearing apart the heroes' mechas makes them split into ten equally powerful mecha, make avolcano erupt in space, and the mechatrump the battle in the anime by making said pocket universecollapse entirely from the impact of two universe-sized drills from two god-par mecha made of pure cosmic energy!! And to top it off... Simon beats the Anti-Spiral using a drill made from theiron of his own blood!!!

Comic Books

Issue 34 of the first incarnation ofMarvel Comics' "What If?" consisted of nothing but humorous takes on theMarvel Universe and its characters (a good number of them one-panel stories, even), culminating with "What Will Happen WhenStan Lee Reads This Issue?"He fires the entire staff.'Nuff said.

TheX-Men comics of the 1980s had the "Kitty's Fairy Tale" issues, where Shadowcat told fairy tales with thinly-disguised versions of the regular characters. In recent^[when?] years,Marvel Comics tried to launch an entire comics line based on extending this premise (minus the in-continuity framing sequences) to their other characters.

Film

The entirety ofMichael Jackson'sMoonwalker. The premise sounds straightforward enough - MJ usesThe Power of Pop to save a little girl fromdrug dealers - but it... really... just...isn't. Even his biggest fans were left scratching their heads,wondering if he'd written the script by dictating the results of an acid trip. Seriously, if we tried to describe it here, you would not believe us. Just go toYouTube and search for some clips, and bear in mind, every single one of themMakes Just as Much Sense in Context.

Live Action TV

Similar to theMad About You example noted above,Friends had a "what if?" episode that explored the possible consequences of Joey becoming a star with Chandler as his personal assistant, Monica staying fat, Ross'sCloseted Gay wife staying in the closet and keeping their marriage going, Rachel having gone through with her marriage (thus never meeting any of the friends) and Phoebe somehow becoming a stock broker.

The X-Files did this a few times, most notably in itsThe Rashomon episodes "Jose Chung's from Outer Space" and "Bad Blood".

News Radio had two special episodes that were set out of continuity: one featuring the staff of a radio station in space, and another where they run a radio station on theTitanic.

Episode 200 ofStargate SG-1, whichWord of God states is out of continuity.

"Window of Opportunity" also counts. Golfing through the Stargate, resigning to kiss someone of a lower rank,cycling through the tunnels of the base with a bicycle bell...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a couple of these in different incarnations: Halloween of season two, "The Wish", and "Restless" are the best examples.

One issue of theSeason Eight comic book series was a recreation of the proposedAnimated Adaptation, drawn in aDiniesque style.
"Superstar" and "Once More With Feeling" make the other examples look tame.

Power Rangers Ninja Storm had an episode which involved Tori being sent to a universe where the Rangers were bad and the villains were good, although it makes you wonder where the parallel universe Tori is.

The Cosby Show had one episode written by Rudy, which featured the cast as fairy-tale characters, clothed in costumes made to look like crayon drawings.

TheBones fourth-season finale features Booth as a nightclub owner, Brennan as his wife, Hodgins as a hard-drinking novelist, Cam as a detective, etc.Of course, it'sall in Booth's head as he's actually in a coma, recovering from the removal of a brain tumor. The dream is "inspired" by a story Brennan is writing, which she is reading aloud to Booth as she sits in vigil by his bedside.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show had an episode where each of the major male characters imagined what it would be like if they were married to Mary.

Star Trek has the Mirror Universe episodes, where most of the characters are downright evil or entirely different than what is expected. Just to add to this, there is no Federation; instead, the Terran Empire exists in its place -up untilDeep Space Nine, that is, when the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance defeats them and conquers Earth.

Enterprise's "In a Mirror, Darkly" two-partner is an excellent example. While the other episodes crossover between the two universes, this one was set entirely in the Mirror Universe.Except for theDefiant that had somehow ended up in the Mirror Universe. That's the Defiant from TOS episode "The Tholian Web", not the one fromDeep Space Nine. TheEnterprise production team went balls-to-the-wall and combined this trope with aBreather Episode full ofFan Service and soft-coreContinuity Porn, not to mention the entire cast inLarge Ham mode and obviously having tremendous fun; it's one of the most entertaining episodes in the series.
Also, three episodes (one in TOS, one in TNG and another in ENT) involve aNegative Space Wedgie that causes the crew to do theMushroom Samba.

Farscape has a few interesting examples. "The Crackers Don't Matter" had the entire crew trying to kill each other over some crackers, while "Won't Get Fooled Again" was... Well,The Dragon was wearing bright red pumps at one point. That was a tame scene.

InLexx the cast tries toinvoke this by traveling to the center of the universe, where the laws of reality supposedly behave much differently. A more traditional example is season four'sA Midsummer's Nightmare, which, while thoroughly bizarre like the rest of the show, does not at all fit into the series' cosmology, a point which is actuallybrought up in dialog and briefly discussed.

UFO's episode "Mindbender" had Straker hallucinate that he was an actor in a TV series about UFOs. One memorable scene had him wandering around the actualUFO soundstage, showing the HQ and moonbase sets.

Similarly, Charlie Drake'sBritcomThe Worker ended its original black and white run with an episode in which Drake is confused to discover that he's actually a comedian in aBritcom. Drake seemingly liked this ending so much he used a variation of it a few years later when the show was revived in colour. There's another episode in which Drake's character gets hit on the head by a boomerang (a deliberate aversion of Drake's song "My Boomerang Won't Come Back") and suffers some weird hallucinations, ending with a trial in which he is the judge, jury, barrister and defendant.

Lizzie McGuire has the episode where Lizzie and Mattswitch bodies.

Roseanne had some of these, to the point where it may not even count anymore. To set out a brief list, there were a fewHalloween Episodes that seemingly broke reality, a few episodes that wereAll Just a Dream, and toward the end of the series, plenty of them, such as episodes where Roseanne posed for Playboy, won Miss Universe, and, well actually the entire final season was this after they won the lottery.

Wolf Lake did this in the episode "Leader of the Pack", in which an incident is presented as narrated to a team of investigators by Graham Greene's characterSherman Blackstone. To say that he's anUnreliable Narrator is an understatement; the episode is hilarious and basically told from first-looney's point of view, with Blackstone admitting to telling the investigators the kind of story he would find fun to hear. Random daydreams andFan Service are inserted into the story, and salacious elements such as amarried pair of gay bank robberswho also happen to be brothers are included. Elements that would actually be pertinent to the story are glossed over, such as brushing off murders with comments such as "drinking problem".

Interviewer: According tomy notes, he swallowed two ounces of sulfuric acid, mixed into a White Russian.
Blackstone:That's the worst thing you can do to someone with a drinking problem.

A sixth season episode ofMystery Science Theater 3000 featuring the filmLast of the Wild Horses has the first segment take place in aMirror Universe where Frank and Dr. Forrester are the test subjects.

A later episode had Pearl in the theater quipping with the bots while Mike hung out with Observer and Bobo on the planet below.

The B-plot of theHow I Met Your Mother episode "The Mermaid Theory", in which Future!Ted's usually impressive memory breaks down while telling his kids about a fight Lily and Barney once had, and he starts describing things that make no sense, like a motorcycle roaring through McLarens, Barney magically levitating a beer bottle, or Barney and Lily switching personalities; then going "Wait, wait, that's not right" and starting the whole story over again. This causes an unusually high degree ofMedium Awareness on the parts of "Barney" and "Lily", who are shown referring to the topic of their fight in-dialogue as "something" ("I'm still mad at you because of something!") because Ted can't remember what they were upset about, and at one point they wind up suspended in limbo, casting glares at the screen and checking their watches impatiently while Future!Ted mutters "um...hang on...let me see..." to himself.

Video Games

The World Ends With You hasAnother Day, you can access this episode after you complete the main storyline and takes place in an alternate universe whereTin Pin Slammer isSerious Business.

Every cutscene inCrash: Mind Over Mutant, which seems to follow a different art style every time.

The "What If?" mode in thePS 1Spider-Man game. It took the base plot and added tons of silly lines. "Doc Ock has trapped me...and I can't stop dancing".

Command & Conquer Red Alert had two: the secret Giant Ant missions and one multiplayer map set on the moon which randomly reassigned all the units' weapons, so you had helicopters firing flamethrowers and V2 rockets.

TheFallout: New Vegas DLC Old World Blues has your brain, spine and heart being stolen by incompetentMad Scientist Brains In Jars who are all drugged out of their gourds, an area exhibiting all the craziest pre-WarSCIENCE! (and since this isFallout, that's really saying something), a gun with a living dog brain as a component, a talking stealth suit that calls you her best friend and plays pranks on you, a base full of talking appliances who all hate each other, and a surreal conversation withyour own brain in a tank, who sounds suspiciously like Seth McFarlane if even you're a woman.

Web Comics

El Goonish Shive:

This strip.
Any of theNewspaper strips, which are specifically not part of EGS continuity.

When Pete Abrams needs a little break from drawingSluggy Freelance, but can't wrangle up a guest artist, he will often spend a week or two drawing "Stick Figures In Space!" where the main characters are re-cast as space adventurers (drawn stick figure style, natch).

"Mulberry'sEpic Yarn"

High Fantasy webcomicExiern spends a month at the bizarro as part of anOverly Long April Fools Gag when it is suddenly re-tooled as a a group of trendy twenty somethings hanging out at a coffeeshop/strip club.

Western Animation

The Halloween special of almost everything these days,following in the mold ofThe Simpsons.Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, for example, where every student at the school was some supernatural creature like a zombie, ghost, werewolf, or vampire, and Ned just continued to give tips like there was nothing weird going on.

Teen Titans had a tradition of showing one episode like this before everyDarker and Edgier Season Finale, making for primeMood Whiplash.

For viewers with no sense of humour who wish to avoid these, skip any episode in which the theme song is in Japanese rather than English.

Dexter's Laboratory once had an episode that used a tape a six year old sent in of his own episode and featured "animation" in the style of crayon drawings.

Daria."Depth Takes a Holiday", which is, shall we say, uncharacteristically whimsical for the series.

TheDonald Duck short "Duck Pimples". Donald listens to scary stuff on the radio, causing his overactive imagination to bring a bunch of shady characters to life. First, he envisions a creepy yet silly salesman who drops a lot of horror novels on Don's sofa. As he starts reading one, more weirdos emerge from the book, such as a gruff police officer who accuses Don of stealing a dame's pearls, accompanied by the lady herself. After someNon Sequitur Scene-y gags, both are about to murder Donald because he hasn't "confessed" yet. Just before they cut his throat in half,the author himself exits the book and reveals the officer to be guilty. The cop confesses it was indeed him, but he ain't amused, and as he steps back to go back into the book's pages, he "shoots" Donald with thin air; he reacts just as if had been shot for real. Terrified, the dame and the author go back to the novel as well. Donald regains conscience and immediately shakes the book to confirm it all ended, as some offscreen voices tell him it was all imaginary. He's not convinced and the cartoon ends with him trembling in fear, slowly muttering to himself "Yeah...Ima......Gination"... Just in time forthe pearls to appear on his neck before the iris out. What the hell, Disney!?

TheEd, Edd 'n' Eddy episode "1 + 1 = Ed" features the Eds probing theToon Physics of their universe, playing with everyAnimation Tropes in the book and demolishing theFourth Wall. Eventually, they deconstruct the universe itself, which turns in anEscheresque nightmare.

TheAqua Teen Hunger Force episodeHypnogerms. It's much weirder that your garden-variety ATHF episode (which is sayinga lot).

InStickin' Around,every day is at the bizarro considering that most of an episode happens in the main character'simagination.

WhileToon Physics are practically nonexistent as a rule to begin with,Duck Amuck shatters any conception of the fourth wall by having Daffy Duck arguing with and being screwed around with by the animatorwho turns out to be Bugs Bunny.

Bugs later got a taste of his own medicine inRabbit Rampage, with the animator beingElmer Fudd.
EarlyBob Clampett masterpiecePorky In Wackyland was one of these foranimation itself. It almost single-handedly established that every piece of animation did not have to be a rip-off of Disney's latest short.

TheRugrats dream episode. We see Chuckie wake from each dream, and supposedly enter the real world, only to discover slowly that he is still dreaming; with strange settings and weird stuff like Spike talking.

Ben 10 did a couple of these.

An episode ofAvatar: The Last Airbender did this. Aang was unable to sleep due to nightmares about facing the Fire Lord in the invasion. This culminated in him having a series of weird dreams until the end, where he's finally able to sleep peacefully due to the others making him a bed and giving him moral support.

SpongeBob SquarePants had the season three episode "I Had an Accident", AKA "Safety Freak". Though most of the episode follows.

TheFuturama episodes "Anthology of Interest I", "Anthology of Interest II", "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" and "Reincarnation".

The Simpsons has quite a few, most notably "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" and "Saddlesore Galatica". What's weird is that they began as ordinary episodes and quickly went into weirdness.

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