Remember what the dormouse said Feed your head! Feed your head! —Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"[1]

ATheme Tune which consists of random, surreal lyrics with little direct relevance to the show.

Increasingly common for theSitcom, possibly an outgrowth of theThematic Theme Tune, intended to convey the "theme" that "This show is wacky" or will make you go "WTF."

Anime

• Studio Shaft is the absolute king of this trope.
  • Tsukuyomi Moon Phase has the"Nekomimi Mode" opening, which goes roughly like this: "Nekomimi! Nekomimi mode! Nekomimi mode ne! Furuu furuu furuu muuuun! Nyaaa nyaa~~! Kissu...".
  • Maria Holic's opening is calledHanaji (Nosebleed), and it explains the plot of the show asKanako sings about how acrossdressing boy is tormenting her. Seems relevant enough, but the incredibly strange imagery accompanying the song is more than enough to justify the label.
    • Slight correction: That is the crossdressing boy himself singing about that. Which makes it all the more surreal.
    • The second season of the show switches to aSuper Robot /Tokusatsu stylebattle hymn.
  • Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei's themesplungeintosurreal from the moment they start. The oddly artistic shots of the mentally unbalanced class only serve to make things weirder.
  • Really,almost everythingStudio SHAFT makeshas aweird opening theme.
  • The opening ofPuella Magi Madoka Magica isn't really surreal, justabsolutely misleading.
    • It's only misleading up to episode 10... After that, the lyrics, at the very least, start making absolute sense.It's from Homura's view, hence it being played as Episode 10's ending. Read the lyrics, and everything makes perfect sense if you keep that in mind.
    • Theending more than makes up for it.
• The opening theme toAzumanga Daioh is "Soramimi Cake", which in Japanese is a play on the Japanese word formondegreens,soramimi kaishi. The lyrics includeGratuitous English.
  • Osaka'sImage Song is called "Time Pavement." It's as nutty as it sounds.
    • But it sounds rather smooth and cozy.
• The closing theme ofDragon Half is a paean to an omelette sung to Beethoven's 7th symphony.
  • Which is reallyironic, considering the main character (who also sings the song) hatched from an egg...
• The closing theme toWelcome to The NHK is a dancing alien singing about how he wants to pretend to be a baby human (Or "kidult", as some people have translated it), while screaming incoherent things like "Nyaaaaaah". A fine closing to a series where most of the main characters are a little less than sane. (Note: This is actually related to the show—given that the show is about hikikkomori-ism and otaku-ism)
• The opening themes toGalaxy Angel are often exercises in punnery, combining the lyrics in Japanese, English, and with what's shown in the animation,plus they don't really make much sense.
• The opening song toLucky Star, "Motteke Serafuku" is a bizarre piece that combines predominately JapaneseGratuitous English-style lyrics with opening and closing verses discussing the Sailor Suit girl's uniform. There are varying translations of it, andthis is actually one of the translations that renders it more normally and sensically, to give you an idea of what it's like.
  • Both surreal and fitting with the shows "slice of life" theme, the ending theme of the first half of episodes were one of the girls singing karaoke of the theme of acompletely different show.
• It doesn't get more surreal than theopening ofParanoia Agent, which features the cast laughing at nothing in particular amid random and often apocalyptic scenes, and its accompanying theme song, "Yume no Shima Shinen Kouen" (aka "Dream Island Obsessional Park") by Susumu Hirasawa.
  • The lyrics of the song are on par, with such lyrics as "Ah! Such a beautiful mushroom cloud in the sky." Umm...what?
• Divergence Eve is an anime series with a very strange first episode, but which establishes that it's in space and there's a battle against some sort of monsters. The episode ends on a gloomy note with an "I am... dead?" with a fade to black. Cut to the bouncy ending theme calledPump up!, which has absolutely nothing in common with the preceding content. It's like replacing the ending credits ofSchindler's List with an episode ofPowerpuff Girls.
• .hack//SIGN's theme tuneObsession hasa strange set of lyrics that don't seem to have much of a connection with the show. (It's also a very fast dance number, which belies the series' leisurely pacing.)
  • It's also entirely sung in English, which is odd itself for an anime. Not a single lyric is in Japanese. This is true for much of .hack//Sign's sound track actully
• The anime seriesAnimal Alley has a nonsensical,Word Salad-like theme song. (Translated) Lyrics include: "Oh, that's just a banana / Mint's not bad either."
• BEEN BURN IN THE HELL BY ALL THOSE PIGS OUT THERE!!!!!
• You're Under Arrest's theme song, Courage At 100MPH, whose lyrics have nothing to do with police work, and have only cursory references to Courage or 100MPH. Instead, it speaks repeatedly of "The most wonderful dream in the world." Lyrics include "Since sadness is the road that leads to smiles, dull, dingy shoes will start to shine too," and "If we make our heels pound they'll soon become the sound of bells..."
• Fist of the North Star Season 2 has quite possibly one of the few non intentional surreal themes. Tough Boy is full ofgratuitous English and basically has no relevance to the series at all. It doesn't stop it from being made of awesome.
• Macademi Wasshoi is a good example, as the show's theme song, while sort of relevant to the show, has lyrics that appear to lack any sense...or sentence structure at times.
• FLCL's ending song,Ride on shooting star, is at once very catchy and chock full of this andextremely gratuitous English.Orange slides and revengeful lobsters abound.
  • A lot of the songs byThe Pillows, who made most of the music used, have really strange lyrics.
• The opening forHellsing, Logos Naki World (world without logos).
  • The opening doesn't even HAVE lyrics. The man is speaking jibberish.
• While not exactly theme tunes,Axis Powers Hetalia'sEnglish dubtrailer songs are definitelyhard to comprehend.Lalalalalala~
  • Similarly, the ending themes are strange not only in the lyrics, but they're strange in thattheyconstantlychange. (Here's a video with all of the Maru Kaite Chikyuu songs, plus some extra ones from other characters.)
• TheEnding Theme ofTransformers Victory muses about a young Star Saber getting up to childish fun and enjoying sweets, then exhorting the baddies to 'buzz off'.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!. Dear god, Yu-Gi-Oh. One of the few animes where you're more likely to get a seizure from thedub.
• Haruhi-chan's OPIma Made no Arasuji. Somehow is crazier than the actual anime, which is anUp to Eleven version of the already uniquemain series.
• Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. There is no other description for the first opening.
• Mirai Nikki: the song itself contains, along with the expected Japanese andGratuitous English, a fair amount ofOminous Latin Chanting andGratuitous German. The visuals contain a lot of symbolism that only makes sense if you've read the manga. All in all, it wouldn't look out of place next to an opening fromStudio Shaft.
• Death Note's second opening themereally has to be seen to be believed. What the hell is even going on?!

Film

• Film example: "Skeet Surfin'" fromTop Secret!
• One could make a case for theJames Bond movie themeThe World Is Not Enough, performed by Garbage, because it has a tendency to contradict itself.A lot.
  • One could make an even stronger case forA View to a Kill andThe Living Daylights. Oh, those wacky Eighties.
• How aboutApocalypse Now's use of "The End" byThe Doors? Jim Morrison's stream of consciousness lyrics certainly make it a surreal song (although the film doesn't use the Oedipal midsection), although Coppola has stated that he just did it because he thought it was funny to start the movie at "The End".

Live-Action TV

• The theme tune toDollhouse is... weird. I don't believe we human beings have a genre for it yet.
• The Norm Show
• Just Shoot Me
• The Adventures of Pete and Pete. The show is a surrealistic version of suburban childhood, and yet the most common interpretation of the theme lyrics is that it's about the Kent State shootings, the song's title "Hey Sandy" is named after Sandy Schuer, who was one of the "four dead in Ohio" who lost their lives during the tragedy. Not to mention that, no matter how many times someone tells you the missing line is "Can you settle to shoot me," the reality is thatboth the creators of the show and the writers of the song have absolutely refused to confirm that or even hint at the correct wording. What does it really mean? Decide for yourself:

Hey smilin' strange, you're lookin' happily deranged [unknown line] And have you picked your target yet, Hey Sandy ai yai yai yai... Don't you talk back, Hey Sandy Four feet away, end of speech it's the end of the day We was only funnin', but guiltily I thought you had it comin', Hey Sandy, Don't ya talk back, Hey Sandy.

• • And no, the chorus isnot "Does your dog bite?" no matter how much it sounds like it.
• The theme tune forRed Dwarf is a woman (not one of the characters) singing about how she would rather be marooned on a tropical island than flying through space... or maybe it's just nonsense.

I want to lie, shipwrecked and comatose Drinking fresh mango juice Goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes Fun, fun, fun In the sun, sun, sun

• • In theRed Dwarf Smegazine,the composer said that it was indeed meant as a reference to Lister's dream of going to Fiji, although since that was never mentioned after the first series, it is now a Surreal Theme Tune, which he's quite pleased with.
    • In an interview with the composer on the Series VI DVD, "Settling the Score", after confirming the above he proceeds to read out the 'lost' verses that had to be cut for time. Hint:the lyrics get even nuttier.
• Round the Twist has a theme tune that mashes up the words to several nursery rhymes for its verses, including "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly", "Rain Rain Go Away" and "Humpty Dumpty", in keeping with the surreal nature of the show.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus. They wanted a theme song that meant nothing about the show, so they picked a Sousa piece, "The Liberty Bell March". Now everyone knows that opening bell when they hear it. These days, no one plays that march in real military-type occasions anymore. Nothing takes the gravitas out of a ceremony like music that brings to mind two grown men hitting each other with fish.
  • Amusingly enough, the pavilion in Philadelphia, PA where the Liberty Bell is housed actually plays it on an endless loop.
• The ending theme ofWKRP in Cincinnati is a peppy tune with gibberish for lyrics; the band in question recorded it as a quick test-run before doing the "real" theme, and the producer liked it so much he used it instead.
• The short lived 1980s game showAll-Star Blitz originally had a mostly instrumental theme that had the title sung at a few points. For a brief period, some downright...weird scat singing (availablehere) was added. It was apparently used for a week.
• Similarly, listen to thetheme toThe Better Sex with all its strange scatting.
• The theme for the British version ofBlankety Blank consisted of the show's title repeated over and again; the show's Supermatch Game used the same tune, but with "Supermatch Game! Supermatch Game!" awkwardly sung to the same rhythm.
• While the theme toThe Secret Life of the American Teenager could be considered thematic, the fact that it's talking about falling in love makes it surreal since the show centers around lots and lots of sex with random people, not love.

Video Games

• The video gamePersona 3 frequently plays music that fits this criteria, Mass Destruction is not an appropriate theme for fighting the countlessGoddamned Bats the game features.
  • The same could be say aboutPersona4's Reach To The Truth if you think about it.
• The originalKingdom Hearts features a surreal opening sequence that is vaguely plot appropriate, accompanied by a J-Pop song that is also vaguely plot appropriate. It doesn't stop the opening from being really trippy though.
  • The sequels opening is a recap of the previous two games, but just comes off as really trippy with out prior knowledge of the plot.
  • If you reverse the lyrics ofSanctuary, the theme song ofKingdom Hearts II, the entire song contains hidden lyrics that are quite relevant to the story of the other games.
• Elite Beat Agents survives on this trope. For example, helping babysit three delinquent children... whileWalkie-Talkie Man is playing. Will Chris Silverscreen's next picture be a hit or a bomb? Well, itMakes no Difference to me! Colonel Bob has struck oil? Well,Let's Dance!
  • ItsJapanese counterpart isn't immune either. Help a ronin pass high school exams usingLoop and Loop! Meteor heading towards earth? Let's get started,Ready Steady Go! But the most baffling example is probably when an anthropomorphic text message has to deliver its note during Christmas...to a song about soccer.
• The visuals during the opening credits ofThe World Ends With You almost make sense, but the lyrics to the accompanying music are absolute nonsense like "I need more candy canes."Actually, it's all relevant to the plot, and gives away several spoilers. It's just so metaphorical that you can only tell this in hindsight. Still, much of it is based on what the original Japanese song sounds like (but not what it means). For example, "show me your best set" makes sense if you think about pins, but it also sounds like "shoumikigen" and "tokubetsu sei", lines from the first and third verse.

Web Animation

• TheHomestar Runner CDStrong Bad Sings And Other Type Hits has aFake Band version of this in the form of the "Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Theme Song". Sweet Cuppin' Cakes itself being Strong Bad's made up on the spot example of "crazy cartoons"

Western Animation

• The theme tune toFreakazoid! seems to be anExpository Theme Tune trying to hang onto its sanity with ever-increasing difficulty. The absurdities in the song tell the viewer much more about the show than straight exposition would. Nonsense thus makes sense while sense would make no sense, creating a paradox and causing the universe to collapse in on itself. ("His home base is the Freakalair / Freakazoid! Fricassee! / Floyd the barber cuts his hair / Freakazoid! Chimpanzee!")
  • "Drives around in the Freakmobile / Freakazoid! Free kazoo (or "Freak-a-zoo")! / Wants to make a movie deal / Freak-a-me! Freak-a-you!"
• The theme song forCartoon Network'sMAD is a bunch of random gibberish ("Hey yabba boy yamma / Mad!") and kazoo. Fitting, since the show is nothing but quick animated shorts and parodies.
• The theme toLittle Howard's Big Question, anEdutainment Show about ananimated boy who asks his roommate questions about the world, has a theme tune in which Little Howard performs a huge musical number about monkeys. ("With their tails, and their bananas/ I think that if we all were monkeys we'd have happiermañanas/ Give me monkeys/ Lots of monkeys/ for you know that it's the monkeys I adore/ if I loved her and she did not love those monkeys/ I would not love her any more - ANY MORE!")

• Trope
• Surreal Theme Tune
• Absurdity Ascendant
• Theme Tune