It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans

James Bond doesn't like to miss a good Día de Los Muertos when he's in Mexico.

"Need to stop using my reality altering ability to make every day Mardi Gras."

— #705 of Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG

Whenever anyone goes to The Big Easy— New Orleans— it's nearly always during Mardi Gras. If it isn't actually Mardi Gras, then the Dénouement will occur in a costume/parade storage warehouse. This is probably due to the writers having no sense of geography.

This goes for any city or country with a famous festival; for instance, a large number of episodes set in Mexico take place during Di­a de los Muertos or Cinco de Mayo^note although Cinco de Mayo is a minor holiday in Mexico itself and is not even celebrated in some regions, a large number of episodes set in Spain take place in Pamplona during the Fiesta de San Fermin (of "the running of the bulls" fame, complete with seemingly obligatory Thundering Herd of toros), and any episode set in Brazil (thus Rio de Janeiro) or Venice wanders into the Carnival. And while the trope isn't really applicable to New York City, there are still a disproportionate number of stories set in the city during the Feast of San Gennaro, or during the Macy's Parade, or in Times Square on New Year's Eve. San Francisco seemingly hosts an excessive number of Pride Marches; one might think that the entire LGBT community is unemployed, or that they have somehow managed to make parade-marching into a source of income. It's also usually Chinese New Year whenever a show's characters end up in Chinatown (with the characters hiding from danger under a lion train), and cities with large Irish communities — Boston and Chicago, for example — play host to frequent St. Patrick's Day Parades. However, it's never Bon when characters visit Japan, nor is it the 4th of July when characters visit America...

Logically, you would think this trope would not apply if the characters are visiting a given area specifically to attend its popular festival, but this is often the only time said area is ever mentioned in fiction, as if people don't have mundane lives in New Orleans.

It's worth noting that "Mardi Gras" is French for "Fat Tuesday", and that it originated as a Catholic tradition of feasting before the fasting period known as Lent, which starts at midnight as Fat Tuesday becomes Ash Wednesday. It did not originate in New Orleans, and the American tradition most viewers are familiar with actually originated in Mobile, Alabama. It is part of a much larger worldwide Carnival event, and Wikipedia has a page on it here.

Also note: Carnival (which Mardi Gras is the last day of) is a rather long season, with parades spread out over about two months with the various New Orleans area cities (Slidell and Metairie especially). Though this doesn't excuse the trope entirely, there are 40+ parades that run through the season, so having the character(s) visit during a Carnival parade is not as coincidental as it may seem—especially if they visit from January to March—as there are other parades that occur on random weekends. The Krewe of Boo, for instance, runs the week before Halloween. And then you have Southern Decadence, a huge annual gay men's festival and parade, during Labor Day weekend. Though not all parades during the year use the same purple-green-gold coloring, having that distinctive color scheme instantly sets the stage for the rest of the scene.

The meteorological equivalent might be It's Always Sunny in Miami, despite being in the single rainiest state in the US. Also see It's Always Spring. The equivalent in local landmarks (rather than events) is the Eiffel Tower Effect.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• The Punisher's comic book Die Hard in the Big Easy takes place in a partying New Orleans. He even lampshades it.
• Naturally, one of the first English comic book stories featuring José Carioca (from Rio) involves Carnival.
• Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! features in the team's origin story several of the heroes making a trip to Mew Orleans (Earth-C's version of New Orleans) during its Mardi Gras celebration, where they recruit future teammate Alley-Kat-Abra.
• Uncanny X-Men: When Gambit first appears, part of the story takes place at a Mardi Gras parade.
• In Sam And Max: On the Road, the duo searches for a group of ransacking pirates in New Orleans. During which, Sam points out that all citizens of New Orleans celebrate Mardi Gras year round.
• Played with in a Lucky Luke story where Luke chases the Dalton brothers through the Chinatown of Virginia City, Nevada. It's not Chinese New Year — in fact, it's seven months away — but the locals insist that it's important to rehearse seven months in advance.
• In one Batman story, Batman and secret agent King Faraday pursue Two-Face from Gotham City to New Orleans where he is planning to sell a stolen missile code to a foreign power. They arrive in the middle of Mardi Gras. Justified as Two-Face had picked this time and place for the meeting as it meant he could walk around in public and everyone would assume his face was a mask.
• Tintin: In Tintin and the Picaros, Tintin arrives in San Theodoros during Carnival season. However, in the earlier story The Broken Ear, he visited the same country (presumably at a different time of year) and there was no festival.
• Ragman: Cry of the Dead takes place in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.
• In Sachs & Violens #4, J.J. and Ernie have a bloody showdown with the mob behind the Snuff Films. It takes in New Orleans while Mardi Gras is in full swing.
• In the Disney Mouse and Duck Comics, this is bound to happen often. For example, in "I paperi di Paperopoli alla conquista del Mitico Ticket" ("The Duckburg Ducks Chasing the Legendary Ticket"), the titular anatids visit Venice during the Carnival, then attend the grand opening of Disneyland Paris the very next day. The Carnival ended on March 3, 1992, the theme park opened on April 12th, but we can forigive the author: how could Romano Scarpa avoid showcasing the most famous event of his own city?

Films — Animated

• In Rio, all the time spent in Rio De Janeiro just happens to intersect in some way with Carnival, the first film coinciding with a countdown to it and the second starting with it a few years later.
• The Princess and the Frog, which is set in New Orleans, primarily takes place during the last three days of Mardi Gras. This is justified for two reasons: one, the event is actually vital to the plot because Lottie is only a princess during Mardi Gras, and two, no one would forgive Disney if they made an animated musical set in The Big Easy and didn't include Mardi Gras. The trope is also downplayed; through most of the plot, nobody even mentions a holiday.
• All Dogs Go to Heaven takes place in New Orleans, and as such has the obligatory Mardi Gras scene, as it's the night that Charlie is murdered.
• When the Chipmunks in The Chipmunk Adventure travel briefly to Rio, of course it's during Carnival.
• Averted in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. Most of the first act takes place in New Orleans, yet despite a scene taking place on Bourbon Street, Mardi Gras is in no way alluded to.

Films — Live-Action

• In Dracula 2000, one of the main characters, Mary Van Helsing works in New Orleans. Dracula appears to her just during the Mardi Gras.
• In the movie version of The Fugitive, Richard Kimble evades capture in Chicago by losing himself in the St. Patrick's Day parade. Funnily enough, this scene wasn't in the original script - Kimble was going to escape the federal building just as the doors closed between him and Gerard instead - but the crew decided to include it into the story when St. Paddy came while shooting was ongoing in Chicago, thus making this a Real Life occurrence of the trope.
  • Parodied in Mad Magazine when a character remarks that "St. Patrick's Day was a month ago! When these Chicagoans party, they just don't stop!"
• Invoked in Grand Slam. Professor Anders plans The Caper to go down during Carnival in Rio because it is the only time the diamonds will be held in the vault for more than 24 hours.
• In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the League is first assembled in London, in a very wet and foggy July as a title-card makes clear; and their first assignment takes them to Venice, during Venice's signature festival, Carnival. This, of course, is the exact same holiday as Mardi Gras or Shrovetide — the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, thus the day on which Catholics overindulge in vices and partying before beginning their Lenten fast. Ash Wednesday is 40 days before Easter, therefore Carnival always occurs in either February or early March. It also doesn't take into account that the Venetian Carnival was outlawed in 1797 by the King of Austria, and wasn't celebrated again until 1979.
• James Bond:
  • Thunderball has a Junkanoo ("Our local Mardi Gras") scene in the Bahamas. They generally have Junkanoo on Boxing Day (Dec 26th), and New Year's, (barring delays) but currently have smaller performances yearly for tourists. Notably, that scene had to be shot at another time of the year, so the film crew convinced the locals to stage an out-of-season Junkanoo for them.
  • Averted in Live and Let Die, of all things. It's actually not Mardi Gras when Bond visits The Big Easy. The parades of people dancing on Bourbon Street are funeral processions. (which were used exactly to avert Mardi Gras given the previous usage of Junkanoo)
  • Moonraker has a Carnival scene in Rio.
  • Of course, the one time Bond visits Siena (Quantum of Solace), it's during the annual Palio di Siena horse-race that completely takes over the city's central plaza. Predictably, Bond gets into a footchase and firefight with a baddie right in the middle of it.
  • The opening sequence of Spectre has Bond strolling through a parade in Mexico City, clad in a costume that indicates that it's Dia de los Muertos. Of note, Mexico City had no tradition of a Dia de los Muertos parade, but staging one for the film was very popular and now they do host such an event each year.
• The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia takes this to ludicrous levels. At one point, Falcor manages to blend in a Chinese New Year celebration in Chinatown. The next day, all the Fantasians are blending in a crowd celebrating Halloween.
• In Robin Hood (1991) (the Patrick Bergin version), the heroes need to gain access to the Big Bad's castle. They use the fact that it is All Fool's Day, and no group observing the festival can be denied admission, to get in and execute their plan. On any other day of the year, presumably, the castle guards would simply reply by riddling the merry men with crossbow bolts.
• Averted in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which is set almost exclusively in New Orleans, and features no on-screen Mardi Gras.
  • The movie does, however, feature Hurricane Katrina, which is apparently the other main thing the city is famous for now.
• Déjà Vu (2006), starting Denzel Washington, is set in New Orleans. At the beginning of the movie, a ferry on the Mississippi River blows up on Mardi Gras Day.
• In The Pelican Brief, starring Julia Roberts, her character gets caught in the middle of a huge Mardi Gras-like celebration on Bourbon Street, thus adding to the myth that New Orleans = Bourbon St. and there's a Mardi Gras celebration there every day.
• Subverted in the film Avalon (1990) when the family patriarch arrives in Baltimore as an immigrant on the Fourth of July and thinks that the fireworks and festivities are for him.
• Mr. Bean's Holiday is set in the end of June, but Mr Bean still manages to visit Cannes during the famous film festival. Which happens in May.
• In the film Double Jeopardy, as Libby tracks her ex down in New Orleans, sure enough, there's a large, Mardi Gras style party going on in the street, allowing her to evade her pursuers.
• The Larry Cohen films God Told Me To and Maniac Cop are both set in New York City, and both prominently feature the city's famed St. Patrick's Day Parade.
• When Now You See Me shifts to New Orleans for Act II, sure enough... In this case it's justified as the performance is scheduled then as part of the plan.
• The Quick and the Dead. Día de los Muertos is being held the night before the Quick Draw competition begins. Then again such is the control that Herod has over the Mexican populace of his Outlaw Town, it's not like anyone would dare to argue if it wasn't the right time of the year.
• Jaws: The Revenge is set in the Bahamas, so of course, there's a Junkanoo festival, but this is justified as it is the time of the year when the festival is held.
• The Pink Panther Strikes Again. When Inspector Clouseau goes to Munich, the yearly Oktoberfest festival is going on. During the celebration, the world's greatest assassins compete to kill him.
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it's Día de los Muertos when Clark flies to Mexico to save a little girl from a burning building.
• In To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, the drag queens arrive in Snydersville just as the town is getting ready for its only big event, the annual Strawberry Social.
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice, set in New York, uses the "Chinese New Year in Chinatown" variation.
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off has Ferris getting involved in Chicago's Von Steuben Day parade, which is held in the Fall, rather than Spring, when the movie takes place.
• Exaggerated in Groundhog Day, when Phil Connors, a weatherman for whom It's Always Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney in the sense where he routinely visits on that day and no other, finds himself in a time loop forcing him to repeat that day in that location. Fittingly, an important part of his exit from the loop involved his learning to treat the town and its inhabitants as a community and people rather than as holiday props.
• In Eternal, Pope pursues Elizabeth and Irina to Venice and arrives during the Carnevale di Venezia.
• A Murder of Crows: The celebrations are going on in the first New Orleans scene, while Lawson has his crisis of conscience. He almost gets murdered by a man in costume as Satan, though he's unaware at the time.

Literature

• These Savage Bones takes place during the three days of Dia de los Muertos, and is set in 1875 Mexico.
• It even works for Fantasy Counterpart Cultures: in Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad, Granny, Nanny and Magrat have a stopover in a vaguely Spanish small town, and end up caught in the middle of a "running of the bulls" knock-off known only as The Thing with the Bulls. When they get to Genua, it's in time for the local equivalent of Mardi Gras, also known as Samedi Nuit Mort ("Saturday Night Dead" in French).
  • Similarly, in The Last Continent, set in a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Land Down Under, it's not only the day of the Galah (counterpart to the Sydney Mardi Gras) but also of the equivalent of the Henley-on-Todd Regatta.
• On the edge of this trope is a party in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the conditions are just right to keep the party going endlessly.
• Talon gets run over by a Mardi Gras float actually driven by the god Bacchus in Sherrilyn Kenyon's The Dark Hunters series.
• When Tracy Whitney returns to her hometown of New Orleans after her mother's suicide in If Tomorrow Comes, it's during Mardi Gras.
• Cameron and Gonzo visit New Orleans in Going Bovine, but don't spend too much time celebrating. This trope is possibly justified in the possibility that the book is a hallucination - in that case, it would make sense a teenage boy would imagine himself in New Orleans doing the only thing he knows about the place.
• The Moviegoer takes place in New Orleans and its suburbs, but the main character has a business conference during Mardi Gras and doesn't actually like the party that much anyway.
• The Masked City, is mostly set in a high-chaos alternate world, shaped entirely by the Theory of Narrative Causality and the whims of powerful Reality Warpers. It's implied that in this world it really is always Carnival in Venice.

Live-Action TV

• Anthony references this trope in the Brazil episode of the travel/food show Anthony Bourdain No Reservations, and also averts it; they're four months early for Carnivale. They do stop by at a dance school, though.
  • His post-Katrina New Orleans episode is a complete aversion. Tony came there not at the time of Mardi Gras, focused only on how people struggle to stay afloat, and showcased the destruction the hurricane brought. Tony, in a very uncharacteristic tone, showed how much of a big deal deal Comfort Food is during the time of tragedy.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): "The Masks" tells the story of wealthy but terminally ill New Orleans resident Jason Foster, who is visited by his useless daughter Emily and her even more useless husband Wilfred, Sr. and children Wilfred, Jr. and Paula. The day of this visit happens to be Mardi Gras. However, the episode occurs indoors so we don't see the actual festival.
• In the Season 1 episode "Machismo" of Criminal Minds, the BAU team arrive in Mexico on, you guessed it, the Day of the Dead.
  • The spin-off Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders has episodes set in India during Holi and in Spain during the Running of the Bulls (with a Spanish journalist character calling it "Spain's very own Mardi Gras"). At least, this time there is some justification provided by the fact that the show is about a FBI unit that provides help to American citizens abroad, like troubled tourists attending a foreign festival.
• In season one of Treme, an entire episode is devoted to Mardi Gras 2006, the first after Hurricane Katrina. However, the season's actual climax comes on St. Joseph's Day.
• In one episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the characters go to Mexico and briefly take part in the Day of the Dead celebrations. A few episodes ago the date had been established as November 18, 16 days after the Day of the Dead.
  • That's not the only time the writers got their timeline messed up...
• Averted in The Suite Life on Deck. The ship stops in New Orleans and Woody appears in Mardi Gras attire asking everyone if they're ready for the celebration. Cody tells him no because Mardi Gras isn't for another 3 months.
• The Wild Wild West's "The Night Of The Underground Terror" begins during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Averted in the same series' "The Night Of The Diva," which though entirely taking place in the city never even mentions the festival. (Ironically, masks and disguises are actually key to the plot in this case.)
• Caroline in the City's episode "Caroline and the Bullfighter", where the gang travels to Pamplona, of course, during the Running of the Bulls.
• Subverted, on all of shows, NCIS: New Orleans. While it couldn't possibly be Mardi Gras every week (though at least one episode was in fact aired on the actual Fat Tuesday, 2/9/2016), many episodes have either begun or ended with some sort of a celebration. This was actually cited in the Back Door Pilot when Ellie Bishop asks if there's a parade every week. Pride's shrugging response more-or-less confirms this.
• Murder, She Wrote: In "Day of the Dead", Jessica's visit to Mexico happens to coincide with Di­a de los Muertos (and, of course, a murder).
• In Malcolm in the Middle, Francis convinces his friends to take a road trip New Orleans for Mardi Gras. They get there, but the audience only hears the action as Francis lies in his motel room, sick with food poisoning, while his friends are out partying.
• Averted with The Big Bang Theory, even though the show takes place in Pasadena, home of the annual Tournament of Roses Parade, it was mentioned once, when Raj recounted the time Sheldon got food poisoning from a hotdog vendor. And despite Sheldon and Leonard, judging from the fact that Pasadena City Hall can clearly be seen from their window, living a few blocks from the parade route.
• Justified in Westworld. The Outlaw Town of Pariah has the Di­a de los Muertos going on when the protagonists first arrive there, but since all of Westworld is a giant theme park with the android hosts undergoing preprogrammed narrative loops, the Day of the Dead probably does happen all the time, or at least once every loop.
• Monk subverts it in the episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine", without even leaving San Francisco:
  Sharona: Where are you going?
  Adrian, as "The Monk": New Orleans, Mardi Gras.
  Sharona: Mardi Gras's not for another nine months!
  "The Monk": Hey, you know what they say. Wherever the Monk is, it's Mardi Gras.
• The Incredible Hulk (1977): The one time David visits New Orleans, it's during Mardi Gras... and he "hulks out" right in the middle of the parade.

Pinballs

• In Red & Ted's Road Show, going to New Orleans lands Red and Ted in the middle of a Mardi Gras parade.
• Invoked in Lights... Camera... Action! — the movie-within-a-game has a Scene set in Chinatown that take place in the middle of a Chinese New Year parade.

Pro Wrestling

• WrestleMania 30 took place in New Orleans and numerous TV spots for the event had Mardi Gras themed scenarios. During the show itself, this was downplayed as only Bray Wyatt had a Mardi Gras entrance. Layla also wore a carnival mask for her match but elsewhere there were no Mardi Gras skits or segments on the show.
• Often it's averted whenever WWE does shows from New Orleans. Aside from maybe an occasional reference on commentary.
• Used as a small amount of cheap heat when the 2010 Slammy Awards were held in New Orleans. LayCool referenced Mardi Gras in a promo (that didn't air for some reason).

  Layla: Ooh Mardi Gras! That's when you throw beads at all your women, right?

  Michelle: Don't get excited, folks. We're not that type of girl^note Referring to the tradition of girls flashing their breasts in exchange for Mardi Gras beads

Tabletop Games

• Subverted in Danse de la Mort: Mary's Child, a pre-made story for Vampire: The Requiem. The main characters either live in New Orleans or are tourists come to experience Mardi Gras, and the story takes place just as Mardi Gras is ending. Just to hammer the point home, the characters are at one point persuaded to anoint their foreheads with ash (signifying Ash Wednesday).
• In the module Goldfinger II - The Man with the Midas Touch for the James Bond 007 role-playing game, the agents find themselves in Pamplona during the Running of the Bulls.

Theme Parks

• Disney Theme Park examples:
  • Every day is the Fourth of July on Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom. That's why there's a parade every afternoon and fireworks every night.
  • Every day is Oktoberfest at the Biergarten Restaurant in Epcot's Germany pavilion.
  • Similarly, every night was New Year's Eve at the former Pleasure Island night club district of Walt Disney World's Downtown Disney shopping area. There were fireworks every night at midnight to "ring in the new year", and cast members handed out party hats and blow horns to guests. The concept lasted for about 15 years, before it was done away with a few years before the area was closed for good.
• The JAWS ride and its surrounding area at Universal Studios is permanently set during Amity's Fourth of July festival.
• Las Vegas has promoted itself as an adult theme park for years, and at the Rio Hotel, every Friday and Saturday night is Mardi Gras.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed II: After participating in the Inevitable Tournament missions, a section of Venice will be constantly celebrating Carnivale for the rest of the game. Even ten years after the Venice part of the plot begins.
• The Millennial Fair in Chrono Trigger will never end till you beat the final boss. Granted that in the game, it is never mentioned how long the Millennial Fair was meant to last.
• Averted in The Adventures of Bayou Billy, where despite the game playing straight many of the usual New Orleans tropes, it doesn't take place during Mardi Gras.
• Cooking Fever: The Chinese Restaurant offers mooncakes — which are only eaten around the Mid-Autumn Festival (or at most the weeks leading up to it as a result of marketing) — as a bonus food regardless of time of year.^note The Mid-Autumn Festival takes place on the 15th day of the 8th lunisolar month, which is usually in September or sometimes early October, depending on the year.
• In Criminal Case: World Edition, the Bureau visits the city of Tijuana, Mexico, while a parade celebrating the Day of the Dead is going on. This is despite the fact that, just a few days ago, the team also attended the Olympic Games Ceremony in Brasil (which is supposed to occur at the start of August) when Day of the Dead isn't celebrated until the beginning of November.
• Averted in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. Most of the game takes place in New Orleans over the course of several days in June, with only passing references to Mardi Gras.
• The heroes of Golden Sun arrive in Tolbi just in time for its annual "Colosso" festival.
• The first stage of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves has Sly foil the plan of Octavio, an opera singer turned mob boss, to destroy buildings in Venice, Italy, to make people opera fans again on the first day of Carnival.
• Left 4 Dead 2 has the zombies and the Badass Crew show up in New Orleans while the "Louisiana Festival", which has Mardi Gras colors of gold, green, and purple, is underway... in October.
• Tony Hawk's Underground 2's level New Orleans starts off this way, replete with a dancing club, girls dressed in weird costumes, and a jester on a float.
• In Final Fantasy IX, Zidane's party arrives in Lindblum just in time for the Festival of the Hunt, where various animals (notably a giant warthog-like creature called a Zaghnol) are let loose in the streets for contestants to hunt. By taking down the Zaghnol, you all but guarantee that Zidane will win the competition (and 5000 gil).
  • Or you can hang back and be a spectator instead, thus letting your Lady of War friend win the competition and setting up the means of getting a nice Disc-One Nuke in the process...
• One of Agent 47's missions in Hitman: Blood Money is to prevent a politician from being assassinated while taking part in the New Orleans Mardi Gras parade. Problem is, the title card explicitly states that the date for the mission is October 24.
  • In addition, there isn't just one "Mardi Gras Parade". There's over 40.
• The four parts of Grim Fandango take place on four consecutive Days of the Dead.
• Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. "Son, it's always Mardi Gras on Booty Island."
• Guacamelee! takes place during Día de los Muertos, and apparently every day is Día de los Muertos in the World of the Dead.
• How to Survive 2: One holiday mission involves a group of survivors who decided to throw a big Mardi Gras party somewhere in Southeast America. In the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. Yep, almost everyone died.
• Mafia III takes place in a blatant No Communities Were Harmed version of New Orleans, and the opening heist naturally takes place right in the middle of Mardi Gras. Justified, since you'd want to plan a heist on a night where the police would be suitably distracted, but why exactly did the Federal Reserve decide to ship money to its Louisiana branch right in the middle of Mardi Gras?
• In Mutant Football League, the New Goreleans Zombies' stadium fully embraces the French Quarter aesthetic, and features giant animatronic skeleton statues playing trumpets.

Web Animation

• Pucca: The episode set in Brazil took place during Carnival.

Western Animation

• In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "When Mice Were Men", the Rangers travel to Spain; to a place named "Tramplonia", to be more precise ^note  It's a play off of "Pamplona", the real city where the Running of the Bulls takes place . The Running of the Bulls is not only inevitable in this setting, but even a key element in the plot.
• Jackie Chan Adventures
  • The bad guys tail Jackie to Pamplona, Spain and spend the episode trying to remember what the city if famous for. They find the answer by getting caught up in the Running of the Bulls.
  • Jackie has to travel to Ireland to remove a bad luck curse, and only after getting there discovers it's St. Patrick's Day. This appears to be a more benign manifestation of the curse, as it leads to people pinching him for not wearing green.
  • Given the show's setting in San Francisco and the main protagonist's Chinese origins it comes as no surprise that several episodes take place at Chinese New Year (including one season finale in China itself).
• The Simpsons:
  • In "The Simpsons Spinoff Showcase", Chief Wiggum and "Skinny Boy" (Principal Skinner) star in a crime drama set in The Big Easy, and do not realize it is Mardi Gras.
    Wiggum: Are there any parties today, Skinner?
    Skinner: Nah; it's not really a party town. Though if I remember correctly, they occasionally hold a function called...Marty's...something.
  • In "Blame it on Lisa", the Simpsons' visit to Brazil randomly puts them in the middle of the Carnival.
• American Dad! has an episode, "Home Adrone", which ends up with a drone being sold to the Chinese mafia. Stan and Steve has to get it back, and find it's been turned into a dragon float for Chinese New Year.
• In Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures, Ezekiel Rage's Start of Darkness happened in what seems to be Mexico during (you guessed it) Día de los Muertos.
• Jem and the Holograms do visit New Orleans during Mardi Gras, but they are actually there to perform in a parade.
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The Series: In "The Bull Market", a bull is stolen in Mexico and shipped to Pamplona, Spain. During the Running of the Bulls, of course.
• A Laff-A-Lympics event takes place in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.
• An episode of Loonatics Unleashed had the heroes in Chinatown to pick up dinner, and it was of course during a full-on Chinese New Year parade.
• An episode of The Real Ghostbusters had them in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, but they didn't get the chance to enjoy it since they ended up having to catch a powerful spirit while they were there. By the time he's banished, Mardi Gras is over.
• In an episode of the cartoon based on Swamp Thing the plant beast is captured by a scientist whose lab happens to be in New Orleans. Mardi Gras is being celebrated while Swamp Thing's friends come to find him, allowing all the monstrous characters to move around a big city unnoticed.
• X-Men: Evolution has a season four episode where Rogue and Gambit go to New Orleans, and it just happens to be during Mardi Gras.
• Scooby-Doo and the gang solve a mystery in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival in "Jeepers, It's The Jaguaro."
• What's New, Scooby-Doo?: They, of course, visit Mardi Gras in New Orleans (that is explicitly why they came to town, so it wasn't a coincidence).
• On The Dick Tracy Show, Joe Jitsu is in New Orleans during Mardi Gras tracking Pruneface and Itchy in "The Mardi Gras Grab."
• In the Looney Tunes cartoon "8-Ball Bunny" Bugs Bunny is in New Orleans sending Playboy Penguin off on the S.S. Admiral Byrd (under the assumption it's going to Antarctica—it's going to Brooklyn) and says he wants to stay around for "Madri Grass."
• Carmen Sandiego:
  • "The Hot Rocks of Rio Caper" takes place in Rio during Carnival (V.I.L.E. was explicitly using the parade as part of their cover.)
  • Season 3 hits Day of the Dead in Mexico, Halloween in New Orleans (providing the costumes associated with Mardi Gras, but none of the other imagery), and Guy Fawkes Day in London (though they miss Carnival when they swing by Italy).
• Comically played with in the Smiling Friends episode "The Smiling Friends Go to Brazil". It's only after the group land in Brazil that they realize it's Mardi Gras/Carnival. But they don't ever see the festival, it's only relevant because they can't find a vacant hotel after forgetting to book, forcing them to immediately leave.

Real Life

• In Brazil, it is frequently joked that in the state of Bahia Carnival lasts all year long.
• This trope exists in the Netherlands as well, particularly for the southern provinces. People from the northern provinces celebrate "Carnival" maybe one day a year. In the South, it can last weeks, leading to a lot of jokes about how Carnival never ends south of the great rivers. Some people in the southernmost province, Limburg, actually do tend to spend all year preparing for the yearly Carnival.
  • Stand-up comedian Martine Bijl wrote a song about this ("Limburgs Klaaglied": "Limburger Lament"). It's about a girl whose mother is from the northernmost province (Fryslân), while they both live in Limburg with her Limburger father, trying to understand why people are so excited about carnival.
  • It's always Kingsday, too.
• Visiting Spain? According to various media, you'll somehow wander into the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
• If the media is to be believed, a small town in Virginia named Chincoteague doesn't even EXIST save for Pony Penning Days. We never see what happens there for the rest of the year.
• Indianapolis gets this bad. The only time the city is ever mentioned is during the Indy 500 race or, more rarely, the tabletop gaming convention GenCon. The Indianapolis Colts get a fair amount of coverage, especially the last decade.
  • To a lesser extent, Daytona, FL, is forever running the Daytona 500.
• The Jordan's Furniture store in Natick, Massachusetts was New Orleans-themed until a remodel in 2016, and had a large animatronic multimedia Mardi Gras that ran about every hour.
• New Orleans itself lives on this trope. They know what they're known for and run with it like there's no end. Even during Lent, stores display beads, masks, and anything else they can get away with. If New York City is the city that never sleeps, New Orleans is the city that never stops partying. And they love that. And what's fascinating is that in many ways, the modern Mardi Gras celebration was set up to give outsiders exactly this impression, with a lot of the traditions getting codified in the years after The American Civil War. New Orleans, recovering from the war, wanted to boost civic pride and attract visitors, so, Mardi Gras, which had waxed and waned in importance over the previous couple centuries, was enthusiastically revived.
• Quick, name something to do in Calgary that's NOT the Calgary Stampede.
  • Calgary comics expo?
  • Flames game? It is Canada, after all.
• Any time you see Punxsutawney, PA in a fictional work, it will be February 2. In fairness, it's a small town with no other claim to fame, and the population of the town does more than triple on that particular day.
• If you're watching or reading something set in New England, it's winter, and it's Christmas, with the whole town in some sort of tizzy over a parade or festival. This can be funny for people who actually live there, because winter in New England is long, dark, and freezing, so Christmas festivals are...not really a thing. The holiday with the most parades and festivals is actually the Fourth of July but media is convinced the region is locked in the grip of an Endless Winter.

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