Formula Breaking Episode / New Media

• Science Fiction Theater 1,000,000,000, a series based on Mystery Science Theater 3000, did this twice: Episode 303: Attention All Heavy Hitters is done in the style of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, while Episode 405: What's Q, Pussycat? presents the series as if it was part of Toonami's Rising Sun block at the time it was written, which somehow effected the episode itself.
• Speaking of Toonami, in 2012, the block on [adult swim] usually airs action-oriented animation, both Japanese and western. However, there are times, usually during special occasions such as Daylight Savings Time and Movie nights, where they decide to air something a little unorthodox. On August 31st, the night they aired Evangelion 2.22, they also aired the kickstarter-funded anime short Kick-Heart. On November 2nd, to fill out the extra hour from Daylight Savings Time, they aired King Star King and Korgoth of Barbaria along with a reairing of Kick-Heart.
• Producer Scott Rouse sampled comedian Jeff Foxworthy's "redneck" jokes with a musical backing and released it as a single called "Redneck Stomp". After it was a commercial success, Rouse took some of Jeff's other material and gave it a musical backing, often adding an appropriately themed chorus sung by a popular country artist or session vocalists. (For instance, "Games Rednecks Play" takes snippets from that album's routine about the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and adds a chorus sung by Alan Jackson.) Many of these "songs" were compiled into Crank It Up: The Music Album, which also included a couple regular standup routines and the "Redneck 12 Days of Christmas". Rouse also sampled Bill Engvall's work in similar fashion in later years, most notably his "Here's your sign" jokes, getting him a Top 40 hit with "Here's Your Sign (Get the Picture)" (chorus sung by Travis Tritt) and "Here's Your Sign Christmas" (chorus sung by session vocalists).
• Bill Engvall's Cheap Drunk: An Autobiography album features Engvall talk-singing on two tracks: "I'm a Cheap Drunk" and "Rich, Fat, and Ugly".
• Jeff Foxworthy applies in another way, as each of his albums ends with "You might be a redneck" jokes except Have Your Loved Ones Spayed or Neutered, which instead ended with a skit called "I Believe", featuring Larry the Cable Guy.
• Brent Douglas and Phil Stone, creators of the Prank Call character Roy D. Mercer, released many of their calls on CD compilations. (The first seven were titled How Big a Boy Are Ya? vols. 1 through 7, after which they Stopped Numbering Sequels and gave subsequent albums their own names.) While most of the discs are nothing but the calls served straight-up, a few of them broke from that pattern:
  • Vol. 2 ended with a parody of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas titled "Mercer Family Christmas".
  • Vol. 3 ended with a "Jingle Bells" parody called "Jingle Fists".
  • Vol. 4 and Vol. 5 had tracks that were just topical conversations between Roy and Phil Stone set to fiddle music (five on the former, four on the latter.)
  • Vol. 6 ended with a musical track, consisting of a phone call interspersed with backing music and a chorus sung by Charlie Daniels. This was also made into a music video.
  • Vol. 7 ended with a skit where Roy competed on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, with a friend of theirs taking the role of Regis Philbin. He uses all three of his Lifelines and still gets the $100 question wrong before beating up Regis.
  • On Hits the Road, several tracks feature 30-second intros, and the last track is a skit called "I Believe" set to mandolin music.
  • Red, White, and Bruised has four political messages and another track that has a call set to banjo music.
  • Vol. 6, Hits the Road, and Get Well Soon all have tracks intended to be used by listeners as answering machine messages.

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