Bottle Episode / Western Animation

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Bottle Episodes in Western Animation.

Shows with their own pages:

• Big City Greens

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• Adventure Time has several:
  • "Marceline's Closet", where Finn and Jake spend the majority of the episode trapped in Marceline's closet.
  • "Still", as evident by the fact that Finn and Jake are frozen the entire episode. One of the workers on the show even called it a Bottle Episode.
  • "Card Wars" takes place entirely in the tree house and only features Finn, Jake and BMO.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Many episodes either take place primarily within the Aqua Teens residence or just focus solely on the Aqua Teens themselves (with their neighbor Carl sometimes joining in). This is justified due to the show's Limited Animation and slightly Minimalist Cast.
• Archer:
  • "Lo Scandalo" is one, the entire episode taking place inside Malory Archer's apartment.
  • Season 6 Episode 5's "Vision Quest" has the entire cast stuck in an elevator for almost the entire duration of the episode. Between the characters' respective quirks and addictions, no cell phone service, and Pam turning it into a Pee Bottle Episode after guzzling a forty-oz. then trying to pour it back in the bottle, the most dangerous mission may have been this one, where they were barely twenty feet away from the office.
• Arthur:
  • "Desk Wars" takes place entirely in Mr. Ratburn's classroom except for the final scene, which takes place at Muffy's pool as she lets everyone cool off.
  • "The Best Day Ever" has Sue Ellen, Arthur, Buster, Binky, and George relaxing at the park, where they stay for the entire episode.
  • A few episodes, like "Staycation", are set entirely in the Read house.
• The season 2 episode “Bitter Work” of Avatar: The Last Airbender is the only episode of the show that solely focuses on the main six characters of Aang, Zuko, Katara, Sokka, Iroh, and Toph. The A plot is Aang finally getting to learn earthbending with Toph and struggling with it. The B plot is Iroh teaching Zuko how to redirect lighting. As for Katara and Sokka, she’s trying to help Toph teach Aang and he gets stuck in a hole. There is No Antagonist and no minor, one-off, or supporting characters. It comes right after one of the most action-filled episodes up to that point and right before the beginning of a continuous, long arc where the rest of the series is set in motion.
• Beavis And Butthead: The entirety of "Roof" takes place outside Anderson's house.
• Bojack Horseman:
  • The episode "Best Thing That Ever Happened" involves Bojack firing Princess Carolyn as his agent. He and Princess Carolyn are the only main characters who appear, and the entire episode takes place at Elefante, the restaurant that Bojack owns. (It's a long story.)
  • The episode "Free Churro" is focused entirely on Bojack giving a eulogy at his mother's funeral. Aside from a flashback with his father in The Teaser, Bojack is the only character to have any dialogue and Will Arnett provides the voices for both speaking roles. The only other characters to appear do so at the very end, when Bojack realizes too late that he's at the wrong funeral.
  • "Sunk Cost and All That" is an interesting subversion. All the characters enter and leave BoJack's office, and there are times when the focus shifts to Mister Peanutbutter at Elafino, but the episode begins and ends with an empty shot of Bojack's office, and the audience's perspective never leaves the room when the episode takes place in it, even when BoJack isn't there.
  • The series finale consists of four conversations between BoJack and each of the other four regulars. No other voice acting is featured.
• The 1930 Disney short Fiddling Around was made in response to the sudden departure of Disney's key animator Ub Iwerks. It featured only Mickey Mouse, and it consisted him of performing violin tunes on a stage.
• Clerks: The Animated Series:
  • In one episode they made a point of keeping Dante and Randal inside the store while incredible happenings occurred just outside, with the whole purpose being to hang a lampshade on how dissimilar the series was to the original movie.
  • The very second episode, "The Clipshow Wherein Dante and Randal are Locked in the Freezer and Remember Some of the Great Moments in Their Lives", was both this trope and a fake Clip Show.
• Craig of the Creek
  • "Deep Creek Salvage" just takes place at the spot of the Creek where Craig, Kelsey, and J.P. are trying to retrieve the gold bar.
  • "Breaking the Ice" just takes place at the Deserted Playhouse Island, where Craig, Wildernessa, and Cheesesticks are stranded. There's also only two actors in the entire episode.
• Dexter's Laboratory: "A Third Dad Cartoon" consists entirely of a single shot of Dexter's Dad preparing to take a golf swing as Dexter and Dee Dee watch, only for it start raining and for them to go home. There is no music in the episode or anything resembling a conflict, and Dexter and Dee Dee are completely silent.
• One of the last second season episodes of Donkey Kong Country combined this with a clip show, taking place only at the beach and DK's treetop house with the majority of the action in flashbacks and with no original songs. This was lampshaded in the episode's title, "Message in a Bottle Show".
• Family Guy:
  • Season 8's "Brian & Stewie" is about Brian and Stewie coming to terms with each other while locked in a bank vault. The entire episode was free of the show's normal conventions (cutaway gags, recurring characters, burns against celebrities, flashbacks). It's basically just Seth MacFarlane talking to himself — no Alex Borstein playing Lois, no Seth Green as Chris, not even Mila Kunis as Meg — for 22 minutes. It's about as minimal as an episode can get, which people either applauded for being different or jeered because of the gross, diaper-eating scene or thinking that the episode is an excuse for Seth MacFarlane to hog the spotlight.
  • Season 16's "Send in Stewie, Please" focuses on Stewie and a child psychiatrist voiced by Ian McKellen, and similarly doesn't have any cutaways, and didn't even air with commercials during its original broadcast to boot.
• Fanboy and Chum Chum has hundreds of these:
  • The series premiere “Wizboy” is set at and around the duo’s school. The episodes “The Janitor's Apprentice”, “Little Glop of Horrors”, “Separation Anxiety” (save for the Fanlair at the start), “Book Report of the Dead”, “Saving Private Chum Chum”, “Norse Code”, “Schoolhouse Locked” (save for an underground cave), “Present Not Accounted For” (save for Book Ends of the Fanlair), “The Sword in the Throne”, “Kids in the Hall”, “Slime Day” (except for the live action sequence at the end), and “Funny Face” followed suit, the second of these only being set in the cafeteria.
  • There’s also a number of episodes (“Dollar Day”, “Secret Shopper”, “Jingle Fever”, “The Great Bicycle Mystery” [save for some scenes on the street], “A Bopwork Orange”, “Frosty Mart Dream Vacation”, “Champ of Chomp”, “Get You Next Time”, "Put That Cookie Down!”) where the only setting is the Frosty Mart.
  • A handful of episodes (“Brain Drain”, “The Tell-Tale Toy”, “Cold War” [though the school appears at the beginning and the Frosty Mart is featured in a phone call], “No Toy Story”, “Lucky Chums”), have the only background being the Fanlair.
  • A number of the episodes focused on Kyle (“Chicken Pox”, “Crib Notes”, “Tooth or Scare”) are only set at his house, with the only rooms seen to date being the living room and dining room (especially the former).
  • “The Hard Sell”, “Risky Brizness” and “HypnotOZed” are set only at Oz Comix, the former two being completely indoors.
  • “Battle of the Stands” is set completely outdoors, on the same curb.
• The Glitch Techs episode "Find That Glitch" takes place almost entirely inside one room. A glitch is on the loose and everyone is kept inside until Phil and Inspector 7 can find out who it is.
• Spoofed in the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law episode "Blackwatch Plaid", which is almost entirely made up of scenes from other episodes re-dubbed and live action scenes (which are cheaper to do than animation). Really hilarious when the ending has Harvey discussing how to stop Phil's extreme monitoring...which, thanks to reusing a scene, has Phil right in the room with Harvey.
• Invader Zim: "Zim Eats Waffles", with the exception of the first minute and about twenty seconds at the end, consisted entirely of two camera angles. May have been due to a relatively large portion of the budget allocated to the second season finale (which was never made due to the series being canceled), although that remains unclear. The commentary actually states that this was the writer's intention. It's one of the series' most beloved episodes.
• In the episode "Beneath the Surface" from Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous the characters are on a boat in the middle of the ocean for almost the entire episode.
• Looney Tunes
  • Any Bonds Today? just features Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd singing on a stage in front of patriotic and militaristic imagery. This is the only location seen in this propaganda Wartime Cartoon.
  • The shorts featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner never take place outside the desert, and the title characters are the only characters who appear in those shorts. The exception to that rule is the short The Wild Chase, where Sylvester and Speedy Gonzales make an appearance.
• Littlest Pet Shop (2012) has at least two such episodes, though in different senses:
  • "Frenemies" is set almost entirely in the day camp room, with a handful of short scenes in Blythe's room and at the storefront. Nevertheless, the episode is indoors from beginning to end, and only the main characters are present (with the exception of Buttercream in one scene and Sunil's parents in Sunil's doctor fantasy).
  • "Eight Arms to Hold You" shows a lot of locations, more so than most other episodes, but only six characters have screentime longer than five seconds. These six are also the only characters in the episode with speaking roles and thus half of the voice actors for this show sat this episode out. To save on animation, a power outage means a few scenes are also set in total darkness.
• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: "Belly of the Beast" takes place only in Lunella's lab and later inside Devil, while Lunella, Devil, and Casey are the only focus characters and Mimi and the Beyonder make minor onscreen appearances.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: "Mish Mash Melee" features only four ponies (Fizzy, Wind Whistler, Shady, and Gusty) and is set in a single location.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Look Before You Sleep" fits this trope, and may have been intended to conserve the budget, since it has only three speaking parts and is set mostly inside Twilight's treehouse. It's rumored they originally were well into another episode which had to be scrapped, and what we got was what they made in about a third of the time they'd normally have to make an episode.
    • "The Gift of the Maud Pie" is this in terms of the number speaking roles (five characters by four voice actors). However, there is a ton of new designs and settings present throughout.
    • "Sisterhooves Social", in terms of speaking roles, is centered mostly on Rarity, Applejack, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie are absent, and Spike is given a cameo in the ending.
    • "Viva Las Pegasus": The majority of the episode takes place inside Gladmane's hotel, rather than the whole city of Las Pegasus.
    • "The Hearth's Warming Club" is set inside the School of Friendship, with occasional shifts to the students' stories.
• The Phineas and Ferb episode "Blackout" mostly takes place in the dark, and the vast majority of the animation consists of several pairs of eyes against a black background.
• Ren & Stimpy: The DVD commentary says that "Rubber Nipple Salesmen" was a Bottle Episode. The only fully-animated scenes are Ren and Stimpy driving the truck and standing outside someone's house whenever they had to sell rubber nipples and the Gainax Ending where the duo get thrown out and end up on the backs of two bulls who ride them off into the sunset. The animation budget they had for the episode was really tight, so John K. and the good people at Spumco couldn't animate Ren and Stimpy actually getting out of the truck or driving away.
• The Rock, Paper, Scissors episode "The Arctic" has Rock, Paper, and Scissors spend the majority of the episode stuck inside their room after their heater busts causing the entire room to get frozen, with the only locations present being their apartment room and Plumber Con, which their landlord Lou is attending while he's away.
• The Sealab 2021 episode "Fusebox" consists almost entirely of one exterior shot of Sealab while the power is out.
• Space Racers: One episode takes place in a storage room, which Eagle and Hawk had accidentally locked themselves in. That episode's name? "Ships In A Bottle"
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • "Gary Takes a Bath", the eight-minute season 2 finale with one voice actor, only three characters (Mr. Krabs doesn't even talk) and a simple plot.
  • "Reef Blower" is a No-Dialogue Episode that only focuses on SpongeBob and Squidward, and only the latter has any semblance of dialogue.
  • "The Camping Episode" takes place mostly outside of SpongeBob and Squidward's houses. The only characters to appear are Spongebob, Patrick, Squidward, a sea bear and a sea rhinoceros.
  • Oddly, "Truth or Square," the 10th anniversary special, is one of these, with the majority of the animated portion taking place in the Krusty Krab's air ducts and the Patchy portion being shot entirely around Nickelodeon itself.
  • "Big Sister Sam" takes place entirely on Conch Street. Simply put, there is only one background.
  • "Yeti Krabs" takes place mostly in an empty Krusty Krab, with one scene showing a snowy mountainside and downtown Bikini Bottom.
  • A rather large number of Season 1 episodes (ex., "Bubblestand", "Naughty Nautical Neighbors", "Opposite Day" (to some extent; the realtor's office is given very brief screen time), "Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost", "I Was a Teenage Gary", and "The Paper" (probably the straightest example on this list)) have the only background being Conch Street.
  • Certain episodes such as "Graveyard Shift", "Imitation Krabs", "The Splinter" and "Krusty Dogs" have the only background being the Krusty Krab.
• There were a couple of bottle episodes on Star Wars Rebels.
  • "The Honorable Ones" involved Zeb and Imperial Agent Kallus marooned on an ice moon.
  • "The Forgotten Droid" is mainly just Chopper and the introduction of his somewhat counterpart AP-5.
• The Steven Universe episode "Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service" makes use of only three characters (Steven, Kiki and Jenny), two voice actors (Kiki and Jenny share a voice actress), and three settings (Steven's house, Fish Stew Pizza and Kiki's dreams).
  • "Future Boy Zoltron," which is set entirely in Funland and often re-uses the same camera angles.
• Parodied and deconstructed on Teen Titans Go! in the aptly named "Bottle Episode", in which the Titans spend the entire episode trapped inside a giant bottle and flashing back to clips of past adventures.
• The Amazing World of Gumball, "The Procrastinators": Only two locations (inside and in front of the Watterson house), with Gumball and Darwin as the main characters. Nicole appears in the beginning and the end, Richard and Anais are only shown in the end, and a creepy clown messenger is the only non-Watterson family character.
• The Angry Beavers' unaired and unanimated series finale "Bye Bye Beavers" would have been this.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • "Lights Out", following action mostly by sound-effects and following the characters By the Lights of Their Eyes.
  • "Desperate Without Housewives" takes place mostly in one room of the Turner house with a static background despite the fact that 24 hours pass.
• A majority of episodes of The Loud House, such as "Left in the Dark", "Get the Message", "Undie Pressure" (especially) and "Homespun", have the only background being at and within the titular household.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) has the appropriately titled "The Powerpuff Girls' Best Rainy Day Adventure Ever," which as the title suggests features the girls stuck inside the house because of the rain, so they in turn act out one of their own adventures. It's generally regarded as one of the funniest episodes in the series.
• The Transformers: “Money is Everything” focusses entirely on newly introduced characters the Technobots and the Terrorcons, with only Recurring Extra Marissa Faireborne, the Quintessons and a guest character in a variety of new locales.
• Most episodes of The Trap Door take place in Berk's castle home, with a few episodes including another location, either the forest outside of the castle or the inside of the eponymous trap door.
• According to Word of God, The Venture Bros. episode "Tag Sale... You're It!" was meant to be one of these by keeping the action on the Venture compound. Then the plot of the episode called for a large number of background, and the amount of work for the animators didn't really diminish.
  • Since a lot of the characters are also voiced by the same two guys who write and direct the show, they've mentioned trying to keep costs down for some episodes by only using at most one other voice actor. And then you get Brock standing in the background not saying anything to give the feeling that he's involved in the episode, but they didn't want to shell out for Patrick Warburton so he doesn't say anything. For instance, Tears of a Sea Cow features only three voice actors, including Doc and Jackson.
• Time Squad:
  • "Killing Time", the only three-minute episode, consists of the guys having to just talk to Nicholas Copernicus about becoming an astronomer for 30 seconds, while the rest is just them waiting for Larry's transport device to reboot.
  • "Larry Upgrade," "Cabin Fever", and "Day of the Larrys" are all episodes where the Time Squad just don't go anywhere in history and remained on the satellite where Hilarity Ensues.
  • "Hate and Let Hate" is a zigzagged example. While it does mostly take place on the satellite (Larry and Tuddrussell arguing), there are also scenes of Otto being left on the desert island and trying to survive.
• VeggieTales has the special known as "Dave and the Giant Pickle", which is a simple retelling of the story of David Versus Goliath. According to the crew, they had spent so much money putting together their previous special "Rack, Shack, and Benny" that they had to make this particular special very simple, otherwise Big Idea Inc. would've gone bankrupt.

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