Apocalyptic Log / Western Animation

• Adventure Time has one in the episode "Holly Jolly Secrets". Finn has found an old set of VHS tapes that contains a video diary of the Ice King. The last tape is the diary of a human, Simon Petrikov, as he slowly loses his mind and humanity, until finally becoming the Ice King. Bonus points for the apocalypse taking place in the background over the course of said log.
• Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake: The episode "Jerry" has an accidental example. Fionna and Cake are watching one of the Ice King's video diary tapes in a universe where everyone (except BMO) has mysteriously disappeared. All of it is normal Ice King shenanigans up until the last millisecond before it cuts out, when Ice King and Gunter are suddenly turned into skeletons. It's revealed near the end of the episode that this universe is the one where the Lich succeeding in wiping out all life, and the tape caught the exact instant it happened.
• In Batman: The Animated Series episode "Heart of Ice," Batman does some sleuthing around GothCorp's facility and finds a videotape inside Viktor Fries' case file. The videotape has him documenting on a revolutionary process that he developed of cryogenesis that he is placing his terminally ill wife, Nora Fries, in until he can develop a cure for her. Suddenly, Ferris Boyle bursts in and demands that he shut down the experiment due to his stealing money from him to commit the experiment. Viktor attempts to reason with and eventually is forced to point a gun at Boyle to stop him from halting his experiment. Boyle then tries to reason with him, before promptly kicking him into some vials containing chemicals relating to the cryogenic process, causing a biohazard, with Fries also visibly deteriorating from the accident while calling Nora's name in a lamenting manner as the tape ends.
• In BoJack Horseman the funeral of BoJack's old friend Herb includes a reading of the tweets he made leading up to and immediately after his fatal car accident. The main cause of the accident was that he was distracted on Twitter while driving.
• Code Lyoko features a rather unique and disturbing take on this trope, as Franz Hopper (a.k.a. Waldo Schaeffer), the creator of Lyoko, uses the supercomputer's "Return to the Past" function to create a "Groundhog Day" Loop, while preserving a video file of his attempts to avert his and Aelita's impending abduction by government agents during that looped day. By the time the entry for "day 1000" rolls around, his sanity seems to be hanging by a thread (and there are still a thousand more entries to go). Meanwhile, as far as his daughter and the outside world are concerned, no time has actually passed at all.
• Duck Dodgers: After "Of Course You Know This Means War And Peace Part 1" ends with Dodgers in his ship being pulled via tractor beam towards a conveyor belt leading to a giant garbage crusher, part 2 begins with Dodgers calmly writing in a book, "Captains log, final entry: HEEEELLLLP!!!"
• Parodied on an episode of Family Guy. Peter gets a birthday card from Cleveland of the "record your voice" sort. The recording starts out as Cleveland just saying happy birthday, than comically spirals into a violent run in with a racist cop.
  Peter: ...Ah, I'm sure he's fine.
• Memetic Mutation has turned Candle Jack from Freakazoid! into a perpetual generator of exam
• In an episode of Futurama, the Planet Express team, on their way to the hive of giant space bees, a.k.a. "deadly, deadly bees," on a quest to gather space honey, discover the wrecked ship of their predecessors, who were killed whilst undertaking the same mission. They discover the black box recording, which recorded a conversation between a nervous underling suggesting they turn back because it's too dangerous, and the over-confident captain insisting they press on to glory. And then recorded the sounds of their horrible, horrible deaths moments later. Leela, who has been taking the role of "over-confident captain" in the current team's efforts, is particularly keen to pretend they never found it.
• Gravity Falls, Dipper reads in Journal #3 that the author needed to hide the book away from someone before it trails off. Season 2 and Gravity Falls: Journal 3 reveal that the author, Stanford Pines was hiding it from Bill Cipher after learning his true colors.
  • In the Season 2 episode "Society of the Blind Eye", the main cast and Old Man McGucket find that the Society of the Blind Eye uses a device to remove memories of paranormal activity. They recover Old Man McGucket's memories of inventing the device, and his descent into insanity by repeatedly wiping his own memories.
• Jonny Quest Classic
  • In "The Invisible Monster" the Quests find Isaiah Norman's notebook, which tells Doctor Quest how Norman accidentally created the title monster.
  • In "The Sea Haunt", the ship captain's log tells of how the title monster was captured, escaped and attacked the crew, causing panic and disaster.
• The Legend of Korra has the sports announcer discussing everything going on in the Pro-Bender arena. Then the Equalists invade and he continues narrating the events. "One of the masked men has currently broken into this booth and is about to electrocute me. I am currently wetting my pants" in the same announcer's voice without emotion.
• Toward the end of Season 7 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Star Swirl the Bearded's journal is discovered fortuitously among a "blind buy barrel" at an antique shop. It chronicles the story of Star Swirl and his companions, the Pillars of Equestria, up to the day of their disparition — a mystery that had stayed unsolved for a thousand years, even Celestia having no idea what happened to them. The journal proves to be a vital clue in solving said mystery, subverting the trope somewhat with the fact that the Pillars are still alive.
• In the My Little Pony Tales episode "Birds of a Feather", several characters get lost in the woods. Bon Bon thinks they are doomed and starts recording everything in her diary in the hopes that one day, it will be found and future generations will know who they were. Everyone else thinks she's being melodramatic. Indeed, they are only lost for a few hours.
• Seen in the multipart episode "Notes From The Underground" in the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, and actually called in advance by Michaelangelo, who is a sci-fi aficionado. Later on used again in the episode "The Trouble With Augie", recording the destruction of an interdimensional culture by their seemingly-benign visitors.
• The Simpsons
  • In the episode "King of the Hill", Grandpa tries to talk Homer out of climbing the Murderhorn, telling him how, in 1928, he was nearly killed when he and his partner C.W. McAllister tried to climb it, only for McAllister to betray him, steal all the supplies, and shove him off the mountain, then continue on his own. Later, when Homer is making his own attempt and is too tired to go further, he finds McAllister's frozen body and Apocalyptic Log, detailing a very different story: Abe had been the betrayer, and had even tried to eat McAllister's arm after stealing the supplies. Presumably, McAllister shoving Abe off the mountain had been self-defense, but he could only crawl into a nearby cave where he likely died of altitude sickness after writing the last entry of the log. The last sentence was, "Tell my beloved wife that my last thoughts were of her... blinding and torturing Abe Simpson. Cheerio."
  • Another episode has Lisa read a letter from her pen pal who lives in a country about to be taken over by a dictator. The letter goes from a desperate plea narrated by a child to self-glorifying propaganda narrated by a grown man.
• Parodied in the South Park episode 'Pandemic', as Randy's incessant camcordering of the disaster gets on Sharon's nerves. And it turns out he didn't have a tape in it.
• A classic Space Ghost episode, "The Energy Monster", features a posthumous recording by the scientist who created it.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "Beyond the Farthest Star". 300 million years ago a member of the crew of the dead ship left a warning message telling what happened to them and why they decided to destroy their own ship.
• Superfriends: Superman kept records that served to memorialize the encroaching threat later in "The History Of Doom".
• In Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, the Alchemist had one telling of how he created the Monkey team, with a final entry showing him becoming Skeleton King.
  " Now, the Dark Ones... take my soul!"
• Done in Disney's Tarzan series by a character who actually lived, but thought he was going to die and didn't get to finish his entry. Didn't help when he said that the item that he (wrongly) believed would solve the problem plaguing the jungle was "hidden inside the p-", leaving Tarzan and Jane to run around the hut exploring every item they could find beginning with "P" (it was the phonograph machine, for the record.)
• In one episode of The Venture Bros., Doc uses a submersible bodysuit in an attempt to salvage a 40-year old spacecraft wreck in the Sargasso Sea, and records his progress with a handheld tape recorder. However, he quickly steps into a giant clam that eats the suit's legs. Until he actually finds the wreck he's pretty much resigned to his fate. "I've taken refuge in the forward compartment and am now running on reserve power. Mobility hindered... morale low... no radio contact. Oh, yeah, I lost my locator. And yes, I realize the irony of that."

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