Rhyming Wizardry

Now my Lizard Wizard, make a gizzard blizzard!

"Now Sword of Truth, fly swift and sure; that evil die and good endure!"

— Sleeping Beauty

Wizards are expected to be very intelligent and hopefully swift on the uptake. What better sign of this than being able to not only cast magic but doing so in rhyming verse? Why require spell components or just have a wizard say random words when Rule of Cool says it is far more fun and interesting if the mage has to use words that rhyme? Of course, it could always be a Parody Magic Spell and/or a component of Magic Music. Unfortunately, it also often results in a Painful Rhyme.

Note that for this trope to apply, singing is not enough; it must rhyme, no matter how good or bad the rhyme is.

This is a Sub-Trope to Magical Incantation, Rhymes on a Dime, and Words Can Break My Bones, creating a Venn diagram intersection between the three supertropes. See also the sister trope Prophecies Rhyme All the Time. Contrast Latin Is Magic for settings where spells are cast using Latin or similar languages instead.

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Whispered secrets of a shattered age; I summon you, renew this sage!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ojamajo Doremi: In the 4Kids dub, the witch apprentices chant a rhyme describing what they want to happen.
• Record of Lodoss War: Spells are cast using an incantation that's essentially a rhyme describing the intended effects.

Asian Animation

• In Oye Golu, Golu rhymes the second half of his "aamlu, baamlu" chant with the aforementioned first half to fit whatever he's casting the spell to do.

Comic Books

• The Defenders:
  • Subverted in the Return Of The Defenders storyline in the 1992 annuals for The Incredible Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Silver Surfer, and Doctor Strange titles, after Strange cast a spell, Namor notes how it did not remotely rhyme, and Strange chastises him for expecting it to.
  • To be fair, many of Doctor Strange's spells, especially in his earlier comics, had a rhyming component to them.
  • In one of the Marvel Adventures storylines, Strange tells Peter Parker that the rhyming thing - and the overall dramatic nature of spellcasting in general - is basically a mind game. Magic is linked to the confidence of the person casting it, and Strange deliberately makes it all look as cool as possible to psych himself up.
• Etrigan:
  • Both the abridged and full versions of the incantations Jason Blood must yell to transform into Etrigan and back consist of rhymes.
    "Gone! Gone! — the form of man. Rise, the Demon Etrigan!"
  • In one storyline where the Joker tries to summon Satan, he accidentally summons Etrigan instead; turns out that because he used a translation of the ritual that made it rhyme, it snagged the one demon most well-known for rhyming instead of the Big D himself.
• Josie and the Pussycats: When Alexandra Cabot casts a spell, it can be done with or without her familiar, Sebastian. Always, however, the spell must rhyme, even though it tends to be fragile or off-target. One particular instance happens when she aims to counter-prank her brother by making inanimate objects near him hurl snarky comments. An addendum to the spell makes the remarks only audible to Alex, not his companions.
  Alexandra: Girls, I'm turning off your ears
  What comes next, only Alex hears.
• Superman vs. Shazam!: Karmang chants an invoking spell that takes the form of a little rhyming poem to summon Black Adam and the Sand Superman to his presence.

Fan Works

• Wizards, Fools, and Foals: A wizard drops by a store manned by a then still-young Starswirl and stops to talk with him, and at one point in the conversation drops a casual rhyme. Starswirl quickly ducks behind the counter, since rhyming speech is magically laden even when not casually tossed about by a magic user; the wizard himself is mildly insulted by the implication that he cannot control an errant couplet or two.1
  I ducked behind the counter. There are few things more dangerous than a carelessly rhyming unicorn, for any couplet might carry a spell.
  "Oh get up, get up," the stallion grumbled. "Thinkest thou I cannot control potent poetry?"

Films — Animated

• Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost:
  • Invoked by the Hex Girls in their song "Hex Girl", where they talk about casting spells on the listener in rhyming lyrics. However, the girls are just channeling a witchy aesthetic, not actually doing magic.
    I'm gonna cast a spell on you, You're gonna do what I want you to. Mix it up here in my little bowl, Say a few words and you'll lose control!
  • Sarah Ravencroft is revealed to be a real, evil witch, and her descendant, Ben, a warlock, when the gang uncovers Sarah's journal full of rhyming spells. Thorn, who is descended from a Wiccan (basically the film's Artistic License term for a "good witch"), is also able to use one of these spells to seal Sarah back into the book.
• In the first Shrek film, Fiona recites the spell that condemned her to turn into an ogre at night; Donkey thinks she is reciting poetry.
  Fiona: By night one way, by day another, this shall be the norm; then you find true love's first kiss, and then take love's true form.
  Donkey: That's beautiful, I didn't know you wrote poetry.
  Fiona: (sadly) It's a spell.
• Sleeping Beauty: both Maleficent and the good fairies cast spells in rhyming verse, including the spell that ends up killing dragon Maleficent and giving us the opening page quote.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Evil Queen, when preparing the poisoned apple. Mom
  Queen: Dip the apple in the brew... let the poison death seep through.
  Queen: When she rips the tender peel to taste the apple from my hand... her breath will still, her blood congeal, then I'll be fairest in the land!
• The Sword in the Stone: The song "Higitus Figitus" is in the form of a spell Merlin is using to shrink his belongings.
• Tangled: The Healing Incantation used to activate the powers of the Sun Drop, later transferred to Rapunzel's hair, come in the form of an ABCB rhyming song. However, not all of the song needs to be sung to activate the abilities — Rapunzel is able to recite just the first two lines to make her hair glow when she and Flynn are stuck in the cave.
  Flower, gleam and glow
  Let your power shine
  Make the clock reverse
  Bring back what once was mine

Films — Live-Action

• Godmothered: Moira magically creates a gown while saying "A glittery gown turns a frown upside down." However, this rhyme is later shown to be unnecessary when Eleanor magically creates a gown without the rhyme.
• Zigzagged in the Halloweentown films: While some spells are done by making use of rhymes, most spells tend to be recited in old Welsh. The biggest example of a rhyming spell occurs in the climax of the second movie when Marnie leads her friends and family into making up an incantation on the spot to re-open the portal door to the Human Realm after it's already passed its Halloween midnight deadline.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: In addition to Ron's failed attempt to use a rhyming spell to make Scabbers yellow from the book, one scene has Seamus Finnegan repeatedly chanting "Eye of rabbit, harp string hum / Turn this water into rum" over a cup of water at breakfast. Ron is in the middle of explaining that Seamus actually managed a weak tea yesterday when the water suddenly explodes in Seamus's face. Like the occasion of Ron doing it in the book, these examples are considered Early-Installment Weirdness since the Harry Potter franchise as a whole generally uses the Latin Is Magic variety for its spell incantations.
• Hocus Pocus: All of the Sanderson Sisters' Black Magic spells rhyme, which lends well to turning them into songs through Compelling Voice, such as in "Come Little Children" and "I'll Put a Spell on You". However, they are also able to use lower-grade magic without rhyming (such as when zapping Max and Thackery).
• TWitches: Downplayed. While spells can be used without an incantation or with a simple command ("Drawer open"), the girls have fun using the rhyming spells Alex made up for her stories as a kid, now that they have the magic to actually make them work. Also Lampshaded:
  Cam (reading from notebook): "To make an object disappear, tap it twice and say 'Oh dear'"?
  Alex: What? I was seven when I wrote that! Give me some credit that it even rhymed.

Literature

• In Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series, all of Stiles's spells have to be in rhyming verse. Slightly complicated by the fact that each incantation only works once, ever. It's also suggested that the better the verse, the more effective the spell, but he rarely has time to come up with more than doggerel couplets.
• In the Enid Blyton classic Book of Brownies, most of the spells and incantations are cast in rhymes by blending sentences in English with nonsensical verbs, from Witch Green-Eye's magical transporting basket ^note (Rimminy, rominy ray, My magic will send you away; Rimminy, romminy ro, Ever so far you will go!) to the Wise Man's Castle Creation Spell, the magic mushroom spell ^note (Mushrooms, take us down below; One, two, three, and off we go; Rikky, tikky, tolly vo!) and the incantation needed to activate a Flying Broomstick ^note (Onaby O, Away we go, Onaby Eye, Up in the sky!).
• In Bored of the Rings, Goodgulf has quite a lot of these, e.g.: "Hocus-pocus / Loco Parentis! / Jackie Onassis / Dino De Laurentiis!" His magic is completely based on parlor tricks and funny incantations.
  Presto change-o, Toil and trouble, Rollo chunky, Double-Bubble!
• In Cookie Monster and the Cookie Tree (a Sesame Street book), a witch hexes a cookie tree with the spell "By the light of the moon and a hoppy toad's hair, only give cookies to people who share".
• In Deryni Rising, the instructions for Kelson Haldane's power ritual are written as a poem with four stanzas, each with a rhyme scheme of AABA. Then in Kelson's magical battle against Charissa the sorceress, both of them recite their spells in verse. The need for rhymes in Deryni spellcasting is downplayed and eventually dropped completely in later books in the series.
• The Discworld novel Wyrd Sisters has a pastiche of the "hubble bubble" scene from Macbeth (below). Granny Weatherwax, who thinks this sort of thing is unnecessary and dangerously wizard-like, isn't impressed by some of the rhymes.
  Granny: "Baboon hair and mandrake root", and if that's real mandrake I'm very surprised, "carrot juice and tongue of boot", I see, a little humour, I suppose...
• In the Dungeons & Dragons novel The Sundered Arms, the bard Devis casts spells by singing short verses. They don't have to rhyme, per se, but Lidda the rogue takes notice when they don't; he responds with a horribly cheesy rhyme during his next spell.
  Devis (casting Mage Armor): Plate is too heavy and scale gives me rashes; Give me some armor that spares me from slashes.
• Epithet Erased: Prison of Plastic: In her dream bubble, where she can control reality as she pleases, Lorelai takes on the persona of a witch who casts spells with rhyming incantations. However, she only does this for fun, and drops the act during very stressful situations like when she accidentally kills Rick Shades and hastily revives him.
• In The Folk Keeper, the Power of the Last Word is the ability to compose rhyming verse which forces fae creatures such as the Folk to submit to the will of the speaker. Pre-composed or previously used poetry will not work; the Power of the Last Word can only be exercised through original and spontaneously inspired verse.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Harry threatens his Jerkass and magic-phobic cousin Dudley with the words "Hocus pocus! Squiggly wiggly!".
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Subverted; Ron attempts a spell with a rhyming incantation ("Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow"), but it has no effect. He thinks it may not even be a real spell, considering he learned it from his trickster brothers. It certainly doesn't follow the pattern of other spells in the series, which have short (one- or two-word) incantations.
• Notably averted with Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings: while he's described as singing all his magic incantations, there's no consistent rhyme scheme or pattern to any of them.
• Magic Tree House: the series incorporates this with its magic. Teddy uses rhymes to cast spells, and in the second four-book arc of the Merlin Missions, Jack and Annie are given a spellbook with ten rhyming verses they must chant to use them, with half being in English and the other half being in Kathleen's selkie language.
• Meg And Mog: Meg's spells usually rhyme (e.g. "Pat of butter, eye of fly, it may not work, but it's worth a try.")
• October Daye: Toby uses Nursery Rhymes to cast spells, though she usually subverts the last line or two to have something to do with what she needs the spell to do. Quentin's spells are similar, though he usually uses songs from his favorite band, Great Big Sea.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Magical Incantation seems to be common with the two human magic systems initially seen, but witches always rhyme for theirs and in the Common Tongue.
  "Open locks, whoever knocks!"
• Spellsinger: Jon-Tom doesn't have to rhyme when he uses magic, but as he uses classic rock and roll songs to cast spells he usually does. Awkward lyrics tend to weaken his spells (or make them more difficult to control.

• Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms: Elena does some magic with a rhyme, each sentence being a separate line of an ABAB poem:
  "Time erodes all that is made. Weakens iron and crumbles stone. Undermines all that is laid. Time is lord and time alone."
• Tales of the Magic Land: Played With; spells tend to have rhyming gibberish in the beginning, although the words of the spell itself don't tend to rhyme.
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: Chanting and rhymes are often required to work spells, many done for hours on end.
• The Witches of Bailiwick: This is how spells are cast, usually taking the form of a little rhyming poem about 3-5 lines long, although more powerful ones can be really long.
• In A Wizard in Rhyme, any rhyme can have the magical power to make what it describes come true. The quality of the verse can make a difference: a well-phrased, well-loved old song packs a lot more power than a slapdash off-the-cuff couplet, for example.

Live-Action TV

• Bewitched: Rhyming spells occasionally appear in the series, usually as a sign of high-level magic, while simpler feats, like telekinesis or conjuring objects, are accomplished through physical gestures, including Samantha's famous nose-twitch. A few examples:
  • In one episode, Endora tries to teach Tabitha a spell that goes "Wizards from the yesteryear, from this moment disappear!".
  • Aunt Clara is a frequent victim of this trope. After bungling a spell, she will try to remember the exact rhyming counter-charm needed to undo it, only to struggle to get the wording right and cause more trouble.
  • As a general rule, it seems that casting spells to directly affect mortal minds requires rhyming power. The episode "Samantha's Shopping Spree" proves that they don't have to be good rhymes, either, as Samantha's Reset Button charm (spoken to a salesclerk who's been transformed into a mannequin) is "You won't remember anything bad, / And you'll follow my lead when I talk to your dad!"
• Charmed (1998) All witches and demons can cast magic as long as their words rhyme or are in some form of poem like a haiku.
• Doctor Who: In "The Shakespeare Code", at the climax, the Doctor has Shakespeare come up with a sonnet to banish the Carrionites. With the help of the Doctor to provide coordinate information, the wordsmith stumbles on what to rhyme with, "a tinker's cuss" and Martha, the Doctor's companion, provides him with Expelliarmus.
• Power Rangers:
  • Several of Rita's early Season 1 monsters in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers were summoned by her using a rhyming incantation (eg. "Sky of fire, Wind of fright, Send to me a Knasty Knight!"). She'd also sometimes use one to make a monster giant in place of her usual "Make My Monster Grow" catchphrase.
  • Jinxer and Toxica of Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue and Power Rangers Wild Force respectively would use rhyming spells to make monsters giant. While Jinxer usually used different rhymes depending on the occasion, Toxica's growth spell was always "Ancient Spirits of Toil and Strife, Give this fallen Org new life!"
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Most spoken spells are done in rhyme, although other magic can be done with a simple physical gesture (usually finger pointing, although a few mages have different ones). The episode "Oh What A Tangled Spell She Weaves" enforces the practice, as Sabrina's Quizmaster requires her to use verse incantations for every magical task for a week. This leads to some painful rhyming: for example, Sabrina raises the temperature with "No spells at school unless I gotta, and I do, so make it...hotta." The Quizmaster himself gets in on the fun to fix all of Sabrina's mix-ups: "Because she admitted she's wrong and a lout, every spell she incanted shall be undone, including some of the ones she doesn't even know about!...They just have to be exact, not pretty."
• Sesame Street:
  • All of Abby's spells need to rhyme in order to work, even if they otherwise don't make sense (e.g. "Feather, leather, feather, leather, now it's time to change the weather!") or use nonsense words (e.g. "Dumpkin, lumpkin, frumpkin, pumpkin!")
  • Subverted in "Imagine That", where Mumford is trying to find the correct spell to go to the beach. He thinks it's a rhyme that goes, "Alakazam, _____, magic take me to the sea!", but it's instead the more mundane-sounding "Alakazam, please take me to the beach."
• Wizards of Waverly Place: has most of its spells in some way rhyme. In the ninth episode, "Movies," when the kids are learning about creating their own spells, it's explained that Alex, Justin, or Max can say a few stanzas that rhyme in order for them to cast magic to do almost anything. They are very context sensitive, however, where saying something one way can mean another, which can cause a number of variable results. For example, from the same episode: "Satisfy my empty belly, make me a peanut butter and jelly" will turn the user into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of making them said sandwich.
• The Worst Witch: Most of the spells rhyme (e.g. "In pond, lake, or swampy bog, bring this girl back from a frog.")

Tabletop Games

• The Dark Eye: Early editions had actual short rhymed incantations with every spell for the players of spellcasting characters, with a literal "if you don't say it, your character doesn't cast it" approach. This was gradually phased out later.
• One alternate magic system for GURPS (recommended for more light-hearted games) uses this. In the example scenario, the mage used random animals to rhyme with what he actually wanted, and the GM ruled that he'd summoned them as well.

Theatre

• Finian's Rainbow: Og casts a spell on the blackened Rawkins to cure him of his ill humor while chanting in rhyme.
• Macbeth: The three witches recite a poem as they brew a potion for Macbeth to drink. They notably use rhyming couplets rather than the iambic pentameter Shakespeare was known to employ, emphasizing their otherworldly nature.
  Double, double toil and trouble;
  Fire burn, and cauldron bubble
• A Midsummer Night's Dream:
  • When Puck sprinkles Oberon's love-juice potion on the sleeping Titania's eyes, he recites a spell in rhyming couplets: "What thou seest when thou dost wake, Do it for thy true love take. Love and languish for his sake. Be it ounce or cat or bear, Pard or boar with bristled hair, In thy eye that shall appear, When thou wakest, it is thy dear." It's unclear whether or not the incantation is required to make the potion work, as Puck speaks in this kind of rhyme for the majority of the play.
  • In the final scene of the play, Oberon and Titania lead the fairies through Theseus' palace after the three couples went to bed, casting a spell to bless the palace and its inhabitants with peace, marital fidelity and healthy children:
    With this field dew consecrate
    Every fairy take his gait
    And each several chamber bless
    Through this palace with sweet peace
    And the issue they create
    Ever shall be fortunate
    So shall all the couples three
    Ever true in loving be.

Video Games

• Gruntilda Winkybunion in Banjo-Kazooie. She exaggerates the trope, as you can plainly see...
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Y'shtola recites a rhyming incantation in Endwalker to create a pair of nixies as part of an experiment. Given that she developed the ritual as a girl, she's terribly embarrassed by the cutesy nature of it.
  Y'shtola: From ocean rise, and cloudbanks form, from mountain spring and rainfalls storm, from river flow and life be born... [spins around and in a cutesy voice] Water, water froth and foam! ?
• King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow: To progress in the game, Alexander needs to cast spells, which requires a rhyming incantation and specific ingredients. The spells are:
  • The "Make Rain" spell, which creates rain:
  "Clouds of thunder, shafts of light. Come and sup with me tonight. Waters three have I for tea. Brew a tempest now for me!"
  • The "Magic Paint" spell, which turns paintings into reality:
  "Magic paint, black as ink. Bring to life, what I think. Make it real, what I draw. According to this spoken law."
  • The "Charm a Creature of the Night" spell, which allows you to befriend and ride on the Night Mare:
  "Creature of the night, to me succumb! Fire and brimstone leave thee numb. Purity bind thee like a chain. To do what 'ere I now ordain!"
• LEGO Dimensions: In the level "Follow the LEGO Brick Road", the player is introduced to a mechanic that binds the currently playable character in a red aura in the Wicked Witch of the West's first battle. When using a spell to do so, she says "A spell to halt the progress ahead, to freeze, to bind my foes in red!" and "Stay in the red mist, that's just fine! Your thoughts, your moves, your actions are mine!".
• Quest for Glory: In the first and fourth games, Baba Yaga does her incarnations in rhyme. The fact that the fourth game has spoken words really sells it.
  Baba Yaga: Spirits of the frigid north, spin the water, draw it forth; Frosty Spirits, summoned twice, turn the water into ice.

Web Animation

• Battle for Dream Island: Leafy uses the rhyme from Blue's Clues to hop into a map of Yoyleland, singing: "Blue Skidoo and we can too" in Season 2.

Webcomics

• Kill Six Billion Demons has Cio recite one of these spells in an attempt to make Allison (who, by this point in the story, is still getting over the fact that demons exist) avert Can't Hold Her Liquor during a Drinking Contest. Because of the way magic works in this setting, Allison simply hating herself and believing she could outdrink a demon allowed her to win without the charm, which she was supposed to consume.
  Cio: Though she standeth two and five, she drinketh all the oceans wide.

Web Videos

• Kid Time Storytime: In the reading of I Want to Be Big, every time the boy changes size, someone says a rhyming spell just before the story gets to that part. First Witcheficent says, '"Badda bing, badda boom, make his body take up more room," then she says, "Badda bing, badda boom, make his body take up even more room," then Eileen/Storyteller says, "Badda bing, badda broom, make his body take up less room."

Western Animation

• American Dragon: Jake Long: Nigel Thrall uses rhymes to cast his spells.
  Bell, book, and candle pull down the handle.
• Animaniacs:
  • A Pinky and the Brain episode had "Charlie Sheen, Ben Vereen, Shrink to the size of a lima bean!"
  • In the same vein, one of their skits "translating" William Shakespeare covered the Three Witches scene from Macbeth:
    Witches: Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.
    Yakko: Loosely translated, "Abracadabra".
    Dot: Fillet of a fenny snake, in the cauldron boil and bake.
    Yakko: "Let's cook a snake." Start with my agent.
• The Backyardigans: In the episode "A Giant Problem," Pablo and Tyrone are wizards who do their spells this way. The rhyming spells usually take them a while to remember and/or backfire on them.
  Pablo: Fippity, foopity, pecan pie!
  Tyrone: Magic wands, make us fly!
• Blue's Clues: In order for Blue and her friends to transport inside/outside of books, they have to sing "Blue Skidoo and we can too".
• Butterbean's Cafe:
  • The show has one where the titular character is about to top the episode's featured meal with the Fairy Finish.
    With a flick of my wrist and a flutter of wing, this (noun) bean will do its thing!
  • In "The Legend of the Shadow Bean!," Butterbean and her team use the following incantation song, which causes their wings and part of their outfits to glow in the dark.
    "Fairy strong and fairy bright, in the darkness, find your light,"
• Captain N: The Game Master: The villainous but inept Eggplant Wizard always makes a rhyme when casting a magical spell.
• Danny Phantom: The Ghost Writer's reality-bending ability requires him to narrate events in rhyming prose. To the point his powers will become disabled if he is unable to come up with an adequate rhyme for the situation.
• The classic Donald Duck cartoon "Trick or Treat" has a witch (voiced by June Foray) brew a potion to help Huey, Dewey, and Louie bedevil their uncle Donald:
  "Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble!"
  Eye of needle, tongue of shoe, hand of clock that points at two!
  [aside to one of the nephews] "This is the real thing, y'know; right out of Shakespeare!"
• Donkey Kong Country: In "Cranky's Tickle Tonic", as Donkey Kong and Diddy prepare to make a mega-vitamin drink to cure their insomnia, Donkey Kong looks through Cranky's book for a recipe. He reads off "Say one banana and zing, zang, zote. Then say coconut and it should float.", which turns out to be a magic spell that makes the Crystal Coconut float out of Cranky's cabin.
• Dragon Tales:
  • The kids use two of these in conjunction with a magical dragon scale to teleport between Earth and Dragon Land.
    • To get to Dragon Land, they said this:
    I wish, I wish, with all my heart, to fly with dragons in a land apart!
    • And to get back home, they said this:
    I wish, I wish, to use this rhyme, to go back home until next time!
  • The selfish Mefirst Wizard is banished with a rhyming spell: "Mefirst, Mefirst, go away. That's not the way friends play." As an added twist, however, the spell must be said two words at a time, taking turn, by all of those present who summoned the wizard, in order for it to work.
  • To split a two-headed dragon into two separate dragons, there's "Alakazoo, split in two!" To return them to their original state, there's "Alakazoo, stick like glue!" Both of these also require a magical artifact to work.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Presto seems to believe that he needs to rhyme when asking his Magic Hat for items, though the hat seems more prone to giving him what he wants when he doesn't think about it, and just grabs for something.
  Presto: I'll fiddle with my twiddle and diddle with the middle and make a magic riddle that'll turn the giant little.
  Eric: Oh great. Now he's doing nursery rhymes.
• Fanboy and Chum Chum:
  • In "Field Trip of Horrors", Kyle attempts to get everyone off the bus on a field trip to the glop mines with the spell, "Reverseus Fieldtrippercus!", only to lose his wand out the window last minute.
  • In "Buddy Up" when FB and CC are stuck in the desert with Kyle, Kyle attempts to sneak off without them knowing by using an invisibility spell with the incantation, "Makemeus Invisiblus!" Unfortunately, this alarms the two boys that Kyle is missing from their Buddy system and frantically try to find him.
  • In "Hex Games", Kyle attempts to start Sigmund's video game with the spell "Gamus Beginnus!", but nothing happens; Chum Chum then bluntly adds the game has to be put in the Hex Box to activate.
• Gargoyles: Downplayed; spell incantations were in Latin unless the caster was one of Oberon's Children, who don't seem bound by language and just say what they want to happen, usually in rhyme.
• Gravity Falls famously combines this with Sdrawkcab Speech in the finale: Right before he's erased from existence, Bill Cipher begins yelling out gibberish that when played backwards says "Axolotl! My time has come to burn! I invoke the ancient power that I may return!"
• Mad Jack the Pirate: In "999 Delights", Mad Jack steals a magic wand, and all the spells he casts with it he does in rhyme. He even lampshades the trope when he first tries to figure out how the wand works:
  Mad Jack: Now, I don't know much about magic, but if memory serves, the spells usually rhyme.
• Done in a Robot Chicken parody of Harry Potter. Example: When Snape tries to seduce Hermione in his "magical jacuzzi", he calls it forth with the spell, "BarryWhiteus, candlelightus, girl-exciteus!" She despells his lecherous advance with the counterspell, "Pedophilius repelius!"
• Rocky and Bullwinkle: Any "Fractured Fairy Tale" that involves a witch will fall into this trope. Notable example; in "Leaping Beauty" a witch, irritated by the titular Leaping Beauty spreading joy and happiness wherever she went, cast the following spell to create boredom, turning Beauty into a self-obsessed bore:
  "From my magic medium
  Come ennui and tedium!
  Dreary, dreary, dull and bleary,
  Beauty's voice will make them weary!
  Ordinary people sleep
  For Beauty now is just a creep!"
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, most spells do not require an incantation. The ones that do typically rhyme the last word in each line (though not always).
  Star: [casting the All-Seeing Eye] I summon the All-Seeing Eye to tear a hole into the sky. Reveal to me that which is hidden. Unveil to me what is forbidden.
• Tangled: The Series: In "Rapunzel And The Great Tree", Rapunzel recites and eventually sings the lyrics of the Hurt, a.k.a. Reverse, a.k.a. Decay Incantation when visiting The Great Tree. As she sings, her hair and eyes turn black and everything in the room begins to decay. It's an ABCB rhyme:
  Wither and decay,
  End this destiny.
  Break these earthly chains,
  And set the spirit free.
• Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales: As recited by Mr. Lizard the Wizard every time Tooter got himself into a jam.
  Drizzel, drazzel, drozzel, drome —
  Time for dis vun to come home.
• Visionaries:
  • Each stave came with a spell that required a rhymed verse to use it. In the accompanying toyline, each character card came with the rhyme for the spell attached to their individual stave; even the vehicle drivers who never had to speak the spell for their vehicle's magic to be used had said incantations on their file cards.
    Lightspeed incantation: Sheathe my feet in the driving gale; make swift these legs o'er land I sail!
  • Even Merklyn and the other wizards, including the sun imp one, do their magic in rhyme.
    Sun Imp: A crystal ball is all I lack; take this spell and send it back!
• Wunschpunsch: Both the standard Invocation and the following episode-specific spell of the Wunschpunsch potion are said in rhyme.

Real Life

• Many spells and incantations used by Wiccans have rhymes or at the very least rules of verse.

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Troper near, Disappear!!!

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