Vanity Plate

Viacom's "V of Doom".

"41 seconds of logos!"

— CinemaSins on Super Mario Bros. (1993)

A short sequence played at the very beginning or end of a program or film to identify its production and/or distribution company. Commonly known as a "closing/production logo" and also variously called a "vanity card," "tag", "sign-off", "end board", or "end tag", this brief sequence displays the production and distribution company's trademark/logo. Ever-rising production costs have increased the number of collaborative efforts between studios in recent years, which has had the unfortunate side-effect of multiplying the number of vanity plates that open a film.

Some companies put a great deal of effort into creating a memorable vanity plate, as this is really the only advertising the production company receives. This has led to famous examples such as the MTM Kitten and the Mutant Enemy Zombie, or infamous examples, such as the Screen Gems "Filmstrip S," also known as "The S from Hell."

CGI in recent years has made these considerably snazzier. A combination of the increase in quality and number of film vanity plates has increasingly led to viewer confusion over when they end and the movie proper begins. Peter Griffin elaborates here.

As the internet rose in the 1990s and 2000s, a community emerged centered entirely around these production logos; while originally it began on Usenet groups where sixties and seventies kids got together and discussed unintentionally creepy logos from their childhood, since the 2000s the logo fandom mostly consists of children, teenagers and young adults who share similar sentiments and have extensively documented MANY of these; AVID (the Audiovisual Identity Database, formerly the Closing Logo Group Wiki or "CLG Wiki") has information on practically every vanity plate EVER, and new vanity plates, or rare versions of existing ones, continue to be found to this day. Logopedia includes vanity plates in its database.

See also Logo Joke for vanity plate variants made for specific movies. Compare Station Ident. Not to be confused with Vanity License Plate.

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Examples:

Film & Television Studios A–M

• 20th Century Fox/20th Century Studios: Formed in 1935 from the merger of 20th Century Pictures and Fox Film, its famous "logo statue" with moving searchlights was first used by 20th Century Pictures in 1933 and amended in 1935 to work Fox's name in. The famous Alfred Newman fanfare was there from the start, albeit in a shorter version than we're used to today; the better-known long version was first used in 1953 to allow for a card announcing "A Cinemascope Picture" after the logo for films in that format. After Cinemascope's demise in 1967, the long version was resurrected by Star Wars in 1977 with the second half playing over the Lucasfilm logo, and the short and long versions would alternate during the 1980s until the long version won out in the 1990s. The first major overhaul of the logo came in 1994, when it became an aerial pan over the now-CGI "statue", though the Star Wars prequels kept the old static format with the new CGI "statue" for the Lucasfilm logo combo. The CGI "statue" was updated in 2009 to coincide with the release of Avatar; a variant used that year only ends with the camera panning up to show the words "Celebrating 75 Years". The 2009 logo was modified in 2020, due to the studio changing its name to 20th Century Studios after being bought by The Walt Disney Company.
  • Their home video label, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, features a different version where the camera pans over to the right to reveal "Home Entertainment" on the right side of the tower.
  • Different fanfares were used between the films with Star Wars having their unique take on the fanfare as arranged by John Williams. And a new fanfare would later debut in 1997 with Don Bluth's Anastasia, being used for every non-Star Wars release from the studio, including releases from Fox Searchlight Pictures. Even the updated 2009 Avatar version of the logo and the post-Disney version still use the the Anastasia version of the logo.
• 20th Television: Established in 1955 as "TCF Television Productions", it used a TCF "statue" similar in style to the movie studio's logo until it became "20th Century Fox Television" in 1959. That year, the logo switched to the standard movie logo, except with "TELEVISION" suddenly appearing midway through and zooming out over "CENTURY" on the "statue". "20th Television" was established as a syndication arm in 1989; in 1992, a new logo was introduced for both TV divisions which featured the "20th Television" name, inspired by how the previous logo's end result would read "20th Television Fox". In 1995, the TV production divison got a separate logo again, with a "statue" that reads "20th Century Fox Television" in full. Two main fanfares have been used: one that kinda-but-not-really sounds like the Fox fanfare and one that sounds closer to an excerpt of the Fox fanfare. The first was used from the 1960s to the late 1980s, when the second one took over; starting from the late 1990s, both divisions have used various rearrangements of both fanfares. With the Disney buyout in 2020, the TV production division began using once again the "20th Television" name and the syndication arm was folded into Disney Media Distribution. The 20th Television logo has a hatedom similar to the Sony Pictures Television logo for being plastered over older 20th Century Fox Television and MTM Entreprises logos.
  • 20th Century Fox Television Distribution, a short-lived (2013-16) division, features a logo similar to a shortened version of the main 20th Century Fox plate with an extra layer containing the words "TELEVISION DISTRIBUTION".
• Acme Productions: Mindy Schultheis' production company. Their only logo contains an old-looking brown TV underneath a giant wrecking ball that says "ACME PRODUCTIONS" above it on a blue background with three red oblong shapes. The wrecking ball falls on the TV smashing it as a cartoony voice sings "Ac-meeee" followed by a cough.
• Adam F. Goldberg Productions: The producers of Breaking In and The Goldbergs; various childhood pictures of producer Adam F. Goldberg (and his family) would be shown. The Goldbergs episode, "12 Tapes for a Penny", was credited to "Doug Fell Productions", presumably to keep in line with the episode's theme of using fake names.
• Air Programs International: This obscure Australian animation studio is notorious for their animated logo (epilepsy warning) featuring a rather crudely animated "spinning vortex" and the API letters zooming into place as the camera zooms in and out, all in time to a deranged synth-and-tympani fanfare. Some see it as the Aussie answer to the "S from Hell", others find the vortex's resemblance to a Beyblade or a fidget spinner Hilarious in Hindsight.
• a.k.a. Cartoon: The Brothers Grunt, Ed, Edd n Eddy, and a few others. The company logo, a caricatured Danny Antonucci (company founder) being skewered by a pencil, accompanied by a generic car-crash sound and a saxophone riff. The logo is remarkably different in every season, special (excluding the Cartoon Network Invaded special) and even Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show.
• Amblin Entertainment: Steven Spielberg's production company features an animated reproduction of the scene from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial where E.T. rides in the basket of Elliott's bicycle as they fly across the sky, silhouetted by a full moon. Originally, the letters in Amblin slid in from the right, but this logo got a revamping that has the camera zoom out from the moon as Elliott rides over it. This still has the letters in Amblin sliding in, but the bars above and below it now slide in as well.
• The Amblimation logo features Fievel pushing the logo.
• Arnold Shapiro Productions: Rescue 911. A spotlight makes its way up the screen before settling on the text "Arnold Shapiro Productions" in the center, and a stern male voice (ostensibly that of a police officer) says, "Mr. Shapiro, step out of the car, please."
• ABSO LUTELY: Producer of Tim and Eric shows on [adult swim], namely Tom Goes to the Mayor and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!! It features an amateur video of a man saying "ABSO... LUTELY!", while the word is printed beneath in pink. The man is actually Tim's dad, and he was responding to the request "Sum up this vacation in 2 words".
• Bad Hat Harry: Bryan Singer's company, produces House, among others.
  • A brief cartoon of two cartoon men on a beach. One is wearing a hat. The other says, in a slightly helium-affected voice, "That's some bad hat, Harry." The whole thing is a Shout-Out to Jaws.
  • Jaws may be unique in having inspired the names of two production companies, Bad Hat Harry and A Bigger Boat (as in "We're gonna need...").
  • This was later replaced by the lineup from The Usual Suspects in silhouettes, first seen on X-Men: First Class.
• Bad Robot Productions: Lost, Alias, ...anything J. J. Abrams. An animated logo of a boxy, brightly-colored robot running through tall grass as a chorus of children call out, "bad robot!" (In movies, there is no voiceover, sans Star Wars: The Force Awakens.)
• Bankable Productions, Tyra Banks' company, uses a bank vault.
• The BBC: Old videos from the BBC used to have one of these on them at the start and finish of a program. It featured a 3D blue and gold flat map that turned into a spinning globe and back again (based off the BBC1 COW (Computer Originated World) ident). They have had various different ones before and since.
  • Their first home video logo, used from 1980-1986, featured a rather nice-looking animation. At the end of the video, it played the logo in reverse, with rearranged music. There were several different music tracks used for the logo; this is just one of them.
• The Bedford Falls Company: Production company responsible for the late 1980s ABC show thirtysomething and mid-'90s Teen Drama My So-Called Life. Snow falls on a Victorian house as the line "...and dance by the light of the moon..." from the song "Buffalo Gals" is sung. Both the plate and the company name itself are a Shout-Out to the movie It's a Wonderful Life: that film was set in the town of Bedford Falls, NY, and there is a scene where Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed sing "Buffalo Girls" before stopping to throw stones through the windows of the abandoned house they would later renovate and live in.
• Belisarius Productions: Donald P. Bellisario's plate. Starts with a stone with sand on it, which blows off to reveal "BELISARIVS". The screen flashes several times, leaving us with "BELISARIUS PRODUCTIONS". Has been used in its original form for over 25 years without a High Definition upgrade, with the only real changes being that CBS tends to speed it up and drown out its original soundtrack with generic jingles and promotional announcements, and the image stretched out to fit the 16:9 screen.
• Best Brains Incorporated: Not having a standard-issue logo, the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000 chose to invent The Stinger — a five-second clip from the episode itself, run behind the BBI name.
• Big Dog Productions uses a logo with a caricature of Jay Leno.
• Steven Bochco Productions: The company behind Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Doogie Howser, M.D., and NYPD Blue. Features a violinist — actually an old photo of Bochco's father, who was a concert violinist, animated via computer — playing rapidly, with appropriately synchronized music. Capitol Critters features a variant with a cartoon mouse playing the violin.
• Boxer Vs. Raptor, seen on Raphael Bob-Waksberg productions (namely BoJack Horseman and Tuca & Bertie), is simply a crude pencil sketch of a boxer and raptor about to fight with a voiceover singing "Boxer versus raptor, na na na na na na!" It appears to be taken from this sketch by comedy groupe Olde English, of which Bob-Waksberg was once part. The company has since been renamed to Vegan Blintzes, the logo showing a picture of the titular dish captioned "they're good!"
• Blumhouse Productions alternates between two vanity plates - one for their usual horror films and a simpler one for other genres.
  • The horror movie variant rapidly moves the camera around a creepy old room, mashing together several horror movie tropes - heavy breathing, floating objects, isolated screams and voices, creepy little girls, blood on the walls, etc. - before landing on the corner of the house, where "Blumhouse Productions" is written underneath a single glowing lightbulb.
  • For non-horror films, the camera just pans up to the corner of the house, then the overhead lightbulb flickers on and reveals the studio name. This variant is also used for their distribution arm Blumhouse Tilt - even for some horror films (such as The Belko Experiment and The Green Inferno).
• Braniff: Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "company" credited for South Park. Actually an old commercial for Braniff Airlines that Trey and Matt stuck on the end of early South Park episodes when they realized they didn't have a production company logo to put on the end. It stuck.
  • The unaired, uncut version of "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" has a variant with six pantsless guys dancing, with the "Braniff Airlines" text as a censor bar, and singing "Bra-niff Air-lines!" off-key.
  • The "pah PAH-PAH PAH! Pah pah-pah pah-pah-pah! pah-PAH!" jingle came from "Shpadoinkle Day", a song in Cannibal! The Musical
• Cartoon Network Studios:
  • There were a number of early versions. What A Cartoon! Show used the studio's first logo on a colored background with information about studio ownership underneath, accompanied with the sound effects of the 1990s Hanna-Barbera Studios logo. Dexter's Laboratory had two variants using a second logo: one that had Dexter crash through the logo inside a robot, and a second where Dee Dee spun the "O"'s in the logo before Dexter crashed through. A small number of pilots in 2001 and 2006 used a horizontal variant of the third logo, with the Cartoon Network Studios building depicted above it.
  • Starting from 2001, the studio's main vanity plate consists of the third logo opening up into a rectangular box to showcase a pencil test animation of the characters from the preceding show performing some action, the top being the text lines for "Cartoon Network", and the bottom being "Studios". At the end of the animation, the box collapses, sometimes as a result of the characters' actions. The vanity plate is played with "swooshing" sounds for the opening and closing, with additional sound effects, music and dialogue being added depending on the production. This vanity plate was briefly retired in 2010, before resurfacing in 2013 using a fifth logo that is a "cleaner" version of the third, with a number of productions using a clip from an episode instead of an original piece of animation.
    • From 2001-2010, some productions^note — various pilots and original TV movies, the latter seasons of Johnny Bravo, Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?, the first seasons of Ben 10 and The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, and Transformers: Animated — used a "laser" variant, where the logo appeared as the result of a green scanning effect. This is accompanied by the final notes of the show's Ending Theme, some sound effects, a piece of music/dialogue from the show, or even silence.
  • From 2010-2013, the studio briefly used a fourth logo consisting of four white blocks appearing to the tune of the channel's then on-air jingle. Three blocks would stack diagonally, while the fourth one would fall off to the bottom right, with most productions briefly showing a clip from the preceding show within that last block. The words "Cartoon Network Studios" were written under it. Most of the vanity plates for the studio's numerous productions can be viewed here.
• Cartoon Network Productions:
  • On Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Cartoon Planet, the logo was made to look like a jack-in-the-box.
  • From January 4, 1999 to November 10, 2016, the network's main production logo was the Cartoon Cartoons Ripple logo. It featured the 1992-2004 Cartoon Network logo at the middle of the screen, with a parent company byline displayed below ("A Time Warner Company" from 1999-2001 and 2003-2016; "An AOL Time Warner Company" from 2001-2003). Between the logo is the Service Mark (SM) from 1999-late 2014 and Trade Mark (TM) symbol from late 2014-2016. The blue circles appear behind the logo while the Cartoon Cartoons music plays, which will stop once the jingle finishes. It takes place on a black background, with a few exceptions, such as DreamWorks' Dragons: Riders of Berk in which it plays music from the credits, logo's colors are inverted, taking place on a map background, and all of its text is black.
  • From November 10, 2016 to April 9, 2021, the Exploding Blocks logo was used. On a blue background, a black square appears at the left and the white one at the right. When they collide, the letters C and N will appear on their respective squares. An explosion graphic effect appears, resulting in revealing the black and white 7x2 square grid. The company's name will appear on it and morphs into the 2010 version of Cartoon Network checkerboard logo. The background color, however, will change from blue to white while the morphing animation plays. Its background music is the retro 4 note of the 2010 CN jingle. Unlike the 1999-2016 Ripple logo, the parent company byline and Trade Mark/Service Mark symbol do not appear below and between the logo, respectively. It was first introduced on a Regular Show episode The Key to the Universe. This is no longer on episodes of Cartoon Network original series, pilots, and films that were produced, released, and distributed in the United States since April 2019 due to the dissolution of Turner Broadcasting System on March 4, 2019 which removed all references to Turner Broadcasting including this division and also resulted on the transfer of Cartoon Network's parent company from Turner to Warner Bros. (with the last CN original series to use this endtag or in general, Cartoon Network Productions logo, is Victor and Valentino and the first CN original series to not use the Exploding Blocks endtag is Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart, while the first CN movie not to use the CNP logo is Steven Universe: The Movie). As a result, they simply end with the Cartoon Network Studios logo.
    • Surprisingly, the Exploding Blocks endtag appeared on Elliott from Earth, which first aired in Africa and in the UK on March 6, 2021. Most likely because the show started production in 2018, when this endtag was still used.
• Cartoon Network Studios Europe:
  • A black ball of fuzz bounces across a rectangle to music, lighting up each part to reveal the 1992-2004 Cartoon Network logo, taking an extra jump to get the last part, and smiling as the words "Development Studio Europe" pop up on the bottom. The name shown on-screen is Cartoon Network Development Studio Europe which was the official name of the animation studio from 2007 to 2017.
  • On The Heroic Quest of the Valiant Prince Ivandoe, the logo is the same as its US counterpart, but has the word "Europe" located between "Studios". This logo also adapts a new name for the animation studio.
• Castle Rock Entertainment, which was behind Seinfeld and many movies, featured a logo of a lighthouse in the distance which briefly shone its light at the camera. This was accompanied by a five note melody, which was given a full orchestra remix starting in 1997.
• CBS' ubiquitous Eye has been around since 1951. The network started out with a plainly lettered logo. Network president Frank Stanton asked creative director William Golden to come up with something unique. Golden drew an eye backed by floating clouds. It's actually inspired by Shaker art depicting the eye of God, and the protective "hex" signs of the Pennsylvania Dutch, meant to ward off evil, but some children find the Eye terrifying. It's also a pet subject of Illuminati conspiracy theorists.
• Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions was the vanity card behind Cheers from 1982-93, in association with Paramount Television (on at least two productions, All Is Forgiven from 1986 and The Tortellis from 1987, they were called Charles/Burrows/Charles Company). The logo was simple: on a blue background, the words "Charles," "Burrows," "Charles" and "Productions" (in a typewriter-style font) came in alternating fashion, first from the left, then from the right, then from the left again, and finally from the right again (the appearance was also from top to bottom, in addition to the left/right alteration). On the shows where they were Charles/Burrows/Charles Company, the Charles, Burrows and Charles names appeared as normal, but "Company" faded in at the bottom in a sort of CGI fashion.
• Children's Television Workshop is the nonprofit entertainment firm that has produced many educational children's shows including its flagship Sesame Street. With its first standard animated logo in 1978, three orange rectangles appeared on the screen which stretched out to form the letters "ctw" followed by the text "Children's Television Workshop" appearing above the T and W. This is accompanied by spacey sounding music. With its more well-known logo introduced in 1983, a white spark flies in three rows across the screen forming the words "CHILDREN'S TELEVISION WORKSHOP" followed by one last spark flying up from the lower left corner and then exploding in the center of the screen. With their final logo in 1997, the letters CTW bounce into a semicircle (taken from the Sesame Street sign). By 1999 the company changed their name to Sesame Workshop.
• Chuck Lorre Productions: At the end of Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men, and The Big Bang Theory, Chuck Lorre would put a plate up for two seconds which consisted of a blank background, a heading which read "Chuck Lorre Productions #(no. of vanity plate)" and a great big Wall of Text, accompanied by a burst of angelic choir. Viewers had to tape the show and pause the plate to read Lorre's latest humorous discussion of his beliefs and observations. At first the plate was white text on black, but it was changed to black text on white because it was easier to read. Eventually Lorre came up with a standard placeholder message (which pretty much described itself as a placeholder message) for the times when he was running low on material. All of Lorre's Vanity Plates can be seen on his website.
• Columbia Pictures: Following its 1924 reorganization from "CBC Film Sales", a logo featuring the goddess of Liberty (a female Roman soldier holding a shield and a grain of wheat) was introduced. The arrival of talkies in 1928 saw the debut of the famous "Torch Lady", a representation of Columbia (the Anthropomorphic Personification of America) holding a torch similar to the Statue of Liberty; it was revised in 1936 and then left unchanged for 40 years outside of minor changes like the lady's American flag draping becoming a plain one in 1942 due to the United States Flag Code forbidding the use of it as clothing. 1976 saw Columbia, like many studios, try out a new stylized logo with the "Abstract Torch", which starts out with the classic "Torch Lady" and ends with a blue abstract sunburst shape created through backlit cel animation and rostrum camera tricks (also with music by Suzanne Ciani that is quite well-remembered; some films did not have this music, or had the opening strains of the film's theme music). Coca-Cola's acquisition of Columbia in 1982 saw the return of the classic "Torch Lady", using the first part of the "Abstract Torch" logo without the zoom-in. The current "Torch Lady" logo that debuted in 1993 begins with a zoom out from the torch and ends with a result that looks like an update of the 1936-76 version. Many actresses have been claimed to be featured as the "Torch Lady", including Claudia Dell, Evelyn Venable, Jane Bartholomew and Amelia Bacheler; Jenny Joseph was used as the basis of Michael Deas' painting used in the current version (which was once rumored to feature Annette Bening); this interview from 2012 from WWL Eyewitness News in New Orleans takes us inside how Deas and Joseph designed today's Columbia logo. Superbad resurrected the 1976-82 "Abstract Torch", albeit with a Sony byline added to the beginning and the background turning to yellow at the end to fit with the opening credits, while American Hustle in 2013 played it straighter, by setting the "Abstract Torch" animation to a jazzy music track, and having the byline "A Sony Company" under the actual Abstract Torch.
  • Columbia's new 100 Years logo, released to celebrate the recent century anniversary, uses not just today's Torch Lady, but all Torch Ladies down Columbia's long history (expertly blending present with past).
• Columbia-TriStar Television:
  • Following the reincorporation of Screen Gems Television as Columbia Pictures Television in 1974, a new logo was quickly created to replace the "S from Hell". Dubbed "The Pretzel", it featured on a red background the yellow letters "C P T" appearing one by one then fusing into a pretzel-like shape, all in time to the "three notes, two arpeggios" edit of the "S from Hell" fanfare used since 1970.
  • The second part of the "Abstract Torch" movie logo was used during the same era for the TV division, albeit with the blue shape being orange instead (it sometimes looks red depending of the print quality). This logo is notorious in the CLG Wiki community for being the subject of a long-standing rumor that a variant featuring a Coca-Cola byline was out there somewhere (the Coke buyout happened within the last few months of the logo's life); video evidence seemingly turned up in 2015, but was later debunked as being faked.
  • The 1982 and 1993 "Torch Ladies" were also used simultaneously on TV; the 1993 version, being simply a still of the Michael Deas painting, actually debuted a year earlier on television. The same applied for TriStar Television, which used the 1984 and 1993 versions of its "Pegasus" logo, the latter also debuting a year early on TV.
  • The merger of Columbia and TriStar's TV divisions into Columbia-TriStar Television in 1994 led to the "Boxes of Boredom" (two boxes with the left one containing the "Torch Lady" and the right one the "Pegasus"), notorious for plastering older Screen Gems/Columbia logos, though Columbia and TriStar's individual logos kept being used until 2001 and 1999 respectively. The "Boxes" themselves were retired in 2003 when the company became Sony Pictures Television and their "Bars of Boredom" took over plastering duties.
• CTV The CTV logo consists of a red sphere, a blue cube and a green cone. It is usually shown after programs produced by CTV, with its familiar sound which is similiar to a loon. Sometimes when going to a commercial during a show, they used to show the logo along with stars of the show that's on.
• The Curiosity Company: The production company, owned by Matt Groening himself, behind Futurama as well as the Christmas Special Olive, the Other Reindeer. Its logo displays the name together with the first image (and accompanying sound) of the short film A Study in Wet, made by Groening's late father, Homer.
• DNA Productions: Animators of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius and The Ant Bully.
  • A tropical beach scene (with double-helix palm trees) is shown and then a CGI three eyed chimp pops up waving at the viewer and says "Hi! I'm Paul!"
  • The Jimmy Neutron pilot from 1998, "Runaway Rocketboy", as well as very early airings of Olive, the Other Reindeer, has a traditionally animated purple cat-like creature instead.
  • At least once as a spoof on themselves they had the chimp say the "Hi! I'm Paul!" backwards.^note Interestingly, this isn't the original clip reversed. Playing it "forwards" reveals that the voice clip was cobbled together using pieces of two separate takes.
  • A couple other gags were having the chimp say "¡Hola! ¡Yo soy Pablo!" and having two chimps ("Hi! We're Paul!").
  • A later variation shows a vacant beach, with a worried voice-over saying "...Paul?"
  • There's a version where Paul flubs the line ("Hi! I...... Line?") and one where he doesn't remember it at all ("So what do you want me to say now?").
• Desilu Studios: Named after its founders Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, its famous script logo first appeared in 1952. Initially, it was just an in-credit logo which would sometimes be animated writing itself in, sometimes just appear. In 1966, the "Merging Circles" plate debuted: to the sound of a majestic horn fanfare, six pink and red circles surrounding a white circle appear, which then merge into a blue circle and zoom out as the yellow "Desilu" script writes itself in, the blue circle becoming a white dot over the "i". The company was bought by Gulf+Western in 1967 and became Paramount Television in 1968; the "Merging Circles" fanfare was carried over for its first placeholder logo.
• DiC Entertainment: Producers of children's programming, including the North American dub of Sailor Moon. (DIC is an abbreviation of Diffusion, Information et Communication.)
  • Their first logo featured their original logo zooming in from a blue vortex. There was another version with weirder music.
    • For Inspector Gadget, it would show Gadget skating by the logo on a blue background (sans the dot on the I); he'd stumble, and the gadget mallet would pop out of his hat and slam into the wall behind him as he flailed away, with the impact of the mallet becoming the dot on the I.
    • For The Littles, it would show Dinky running by the logo and dotting the I with a button before stumbling off the screen. This version used an orange background, but on the French version the background was red.
  • Their most famous signoff is popularly known as "The Kid in Bed." Used from 1987-2001, this animated logo starts with a kid and his dog sleeping in a bed and then transitions to a starry sky in which the logo appears with a bright shining star transitioning to the dot in the I. The music was different in many versions of the logo.
  • For DiC Toon-Time Video, a home video labeled operated in conjunction with Buena Vista Home Video/Walt Disney Home Video in the 90's, a different Vanity Plate appeared prior to the feature program on each video. This one has a funky-shaped TV swaying back and forth as it moves back onto a back cartoonish plaque, and once it's there, you can hear the knob on the TV clicking and a flash from the TV emits, after which the Toon-Time Video logo appears below it. This Vanity Plate uses the same music as "The Kid in Bed" signoff.
  • The acronym of the company was pronounced as in French; i.e., "deek". Sure to get a "hunh?" from monolingual English-speakers. It was also a shout out to DiC co-founder Andy Heyward's father, Louis "Deke" Heyward, who himself worked in the television business as vice president in charge of development for Barry & Enright Productions.
• Disney Television Animation: The studio did not receive a vanity plate until 2003, with the studio being credited solely in the Credits Roll. This vanity plate was a variant of the 1990 "Walt Disney Pictures" logo featuring Cinderella's castle. This logo was slightly altered in 2011, when the studio's name changed from "Walt Disney Television Animation" to "Disney Television Animation". In 2015, the studio's received a new vanity plate that uses a unique logo which depicts have Mickey Mouse (the character's design from the 2013 TV series) in a walking pose alongside the studio name.
• DreamWorks SKG and DreamWorks Animation:
  • A Tom Sawyer-ish boy on a crescent moon that forms the "D" in "DreamWorks".
  • The DreamWorks Animation variant begins with the boy floating up to the moon on colorful balloons, then letting go of the balloons, which fly up and pop to create the letters of the logo. The music that plays is the unofficial theme of DreamWorks Animation, "Fairytale".
  • A new variant opens on the full moon that opens to its crescent shape revealing the boy who swings around his fishing line, whipping hook at the camera, clearing away some clouds and allowing the letters of the logo to fly in from the foreground.
  • When the studio was bought out by Universal, a new version of the logo was made to accompany it starting with How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. It starts out with a painting of the sky during the day, which then turns into dusk and then finally night. All the while, the painted look slowly turns into CG as a white sphere forms in the middle with the boy on the moon in silhouette, with the letters of the logo being drawn in below.
  • Another variant was made, starting with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The boy, now dubbed the Moon Child, rides the crescent moon past characters from DreamWorks Animation's past, passing finger guns to the Bad Guys, Toothless appearing in a constellation, Po and Ted Templeton bowing and winking to the camera respectively, hi-fiving Poppy, and finally waving to Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona, finally settling down in the sky to fish afterward.
    • Shortly after this logo was unveiled, it was announced that different DWA franchises will be represented in the sequence depending on the movie being shown before it. This eventually came to pass with Trolls Band Together, with Po and Ted swapped out with Alex and Marty and Eep Crood waving at and reaching out to the camera respectively, while Puss in Boots creates an opening through the sky to transition into the Shrek scene in place of Poppy.
• Epitome Pictures: The people behind Degrassi: The Next Generation. Uses a flaming torch to form the "T" in "EpiTome. Recently redesigned.
• Filmways:
  • Several different signoffs were used. The best-known of these, used between 1961 and 1978, features a horizontally-stretched globe against a starfield, with "A Filmways Television Presentation" paralleling the top and bottom of the globe. A voiceover stating "This has been a Filmways presentation" usually accompanied the logo, spoken by one of the stars of the show that preceded it. The most famous examples came from The Beverly Hillbillies, spoken by Donna Douglas as Elly May, and Green Acres with Eva Gabor saying: "This has been a Filmways presentation, dahling."
  • Filmways switched to a haunting bell toll around 1978, with the Filmways logo and several shadow copies appearing from the bottom of the screen. This was most common on early Ruby-Spears cartoons, particularly Plastic Man and Thundarr the Barbarian. Another, more obscure vanity plate showed an intense burst of light forming an attractive blue logo.
• Frederator:
  • The company behind The Fairly OddParents!, My Life as a Teenage Robot, ChalkZone, Oh Yeah! Cartoons, Fanboy and Chum Chum and Adventure Time. For all but the last two shows, bits of metal are hammered onto a blue background, forming a circle of metal, and "A Frederator Incorporated Production" logo flies into the circle. Then, a woman shouts, "FREDERATOR!"
  • On Fanboy and Chum Chum and early episodes of Adventure Time, the logo shows a stop-motion robot drilling the words into a green mountain. The "FREDERATOR!!!" yell is then heard.
  • Later episodes of Adventure Time had the same robot's head being built out of Lego with the hammering sounds playing in the background. The "FREDERATOR!" yell is heard after the head is complete.
• Fremulon: Michael Schur's production company is behind shows such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The vanity plate features Nick Offerman saying, "Fremulon" and Schur saying, "Not a doctor".
• Funimation Entertainment:
  • The original vanity plate featured the different shapes of the Funimation logo (a star, a rectangle, and a circle) slowly falling into place, creating the logo. This was only seen in the 1994 release of the first Dragon Ball movie. It was replaced afterwords with a new vanity featuring the different shapes moving on their own (including the rectangle jiggling into place), before the shapes were properly arranged, creating the logo. Both of these vanities used the same music and sound effects, and lasted about 10 seconds each.
  • A new vanity (arguably the one fans are most familiar with) was introduced in about 1998, and was only about 3 seconds long. It featured all the different shapes quickly flying into place. It was used on all Funimation video releases, and after every showing of Dragon Ball Z.
  • Around 2004, the logo was changed to show a static FUNimation logo sitting in place behind bubbles (also bearing the logo) while a voice from behind whispered "FUNimation" against the sounds of children laughing.
  • A slightly different variant of the 2004 logo was introduced in 2006: elements from the 2004 logo (The words "FUNimation", and the ball and star within a big blue rectangle) fly into place against a black background while a whispering voice said "FUNimation", before a light flashed, and the logo disappeared (some uses cut this part out). Another version of this vanity was used in around 2008, and featured modified graphics.
  • Another vanity was introduced in 2009, and featured a white background while the FUNimation logo was quickly drawn (with audible pencil strokes) while paint slowly filled the logo with its proper colors. A man and a woman's voices are heard saying "FUNimation", while the logo disappeared and another voice (presumably Christopher Sabat) whispered the text "You Should Be Watching". An abbreviated version of this vanity was used for TV broadcasts.
  • The 2012 vanity uses different approach. It drops the shapes altogether, and features the FUNimation logo against a quickly changing background representing different genres of anime (with a very "modern" flair). It ends with the logo sitting static against a plain white background.
  • For the company's 20th anniversary in 2014, a brief animation reel of common anime sfx plays, including Dragon Ball Z style clashes, blosoms floating away, and energy surges. It also briefly brings back the shapes by styling them into a blue and red "20", the 0 serving as the circle with the star in it before turning into a one star Dragon Ball. After the anniversary logo turns purple, it quickly disappears in a flash of light, while the normal Funimation logo gets sliced and falls off the screen.
  • The 2016 logo drops the old font and white background, but keeps the 2012 plate theme. After showing off a circle that changes contents based on genre when it flips, a minimalist smiley face flips into view and makes "funimation" appear around the face with several items floating away. The background was also changed to purple. A shorter version of this plate was used for their DVD and online output.
• Georges Méliès: This French pioneer of Early Films registered a trademark for his studio, featuring a simple star logo and the words "Star Film" (yes, in English), back in 1897. In an attempt to protect his films from being illegally copied, he often put the trademark somewhere on the film set in an important scene in the film, so that it would be considerably harder for film pirates to hide where they had stolen it from.
• Georgian Bay Ltd. was the vanity card behind Webster on ABC and in syndication from 1983-89, in association with Paramount Television; it was also the vanity card of the married co-stars of that show, Alex Karras and Susan Clark. Specifically, the logo consisted of a circular image of a Canadian forest on a white background (Susan Clark is Canadian, from Ontario — Georgian Bay, an arm of Lake Huron, is located entirely in Ontario), with a white moon at the top left of it, two white trees to the right, and a hill of snow at the bottom; the Georgian Bay Ltd. name slid out from the right of that, with "In Association With" appearing at the bottom, which then gave way to the Blue Mtn. logo of Paramount Television. In the fourth season, the IAW line was removed from this, and moved to a co-vanity card, Emmanuel Lewis Entertainment Enterprises, Inc.; this would be used for that fourth season with the Blue Mtn. of Paramount Television, and with the then-new CGI Mtn. in syndication from 1987-89.
• Goblin Caught On Tape: Zach Hadel's personal studio which produces Smiling Friends features a large, grotesquely detailed goblin head, with a bit-compressed recording of Zach saying, "Goblin caught on tape!"
• Gracie Films: James L. Brooks' production company, established in 1986 and named after Gracie Allen. Set in a movie theater, the logo starts with the audience (in silhouette) talking before a lady shushes them and the company name appears on the screen to a jingle composed by Jeffrey Townsend on a KORG 05R/W (thought by some to be based on Go West's hit "The King of Wishful Thinking", but the logo actually came first). The audience sound was provided by Townsend and then-Fox CEO Garth Anchier double-tracking themselves to sound like more people and the "shush" was provided by Tracey Ullman, whose eponymous show was the first to use the logo. It appeared on other Gracie Films productions like The Critic, Phenom and most famously, The Simpsons. The latter featured several audio variations over the years, such as the Treehouse of Horror episodes replacing the "shush" with a scream and the jingle being done in a minor key on a pipe organ or "The Old Man and the Key" having Lisa imitate the Filmways sign-off on The Beverly Hillbillies by saying "This has been a Gracie Films pray-sen-tay-shun"; several more are listed here under "Alternate Gracie Films Logos". A plaque bearing the theater and logo are located just inside the queue of The Simpsons Ride. The Simpsons Guy has Peter Griffin sing "and now the show is over now" over the theme.
• David Greenwalt Productions from David Greenwalt of Buffy, Angel, Jake 2.0 and others, uses a literal vanity license plate on a motorhome and a kid saying "Dad, let's go!" as its vanity plate.
• Guntzelman Sullivan Marshall: The producers of Growing Pains and Just the Ten of Us used a logo depicting a man falling off the roof of a house at night and screaming.
• Hanna-Barbera:
  • Their first proper closing logo, "The HB Box" came about when Taft Broadcasting purchased the studio in 1967, consisting of a huge blocky "HB" over which "a hanna-barbera production" appears. Three distinct variants exist. The first, used in Jack and the Beanstalk (1967) and The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968-69), has orange rectangles stretching over a black background to form a black "HB", which zooms out over the now-orange background, followed by the text appearing and a yellow or orange "HB" fading in behind, all accompanied by a frantic jingle. The second and most famous one, used 1968-74, has an orange "HB" zooming in over a black background, then the background cutting to orange as the text appears, accompanined by a flute/organ glissando. The third one, used 1969-71, reuses the first variant's stretching rectangles idea, but instead of zooming out, the "HB" turns to blue; this also uses the glissando jingle.
  • This was followed by the "Rainbow HB" used from 1974-79, which begins with columns of "HANNA-BARBERA" text in rainbow colors which all disappear except one, which morphs into a stylized "HB" with a scrolling pattern of rainbow colors with columns of "HANNA-BARBERA" text. If you look closely at the background of the title cards and end credits for The Scooby-Doo Show and Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, you'll notice it's made up using the same stylized "HB" logo.
  • 1979 saw the introduction of the famous "Swirling Star" logo designed by Saul Bass, basically Spectacular Spinning: The Vanity Plate. A white star spins into view leaving a rainbow trail behind, then stops in the middle with its trail forming a neat circle; futuristic synthesized music accompanies the action. It was redesigned in 1986 with CGI with a metallic star and a shinier, looser trail which produced a less symmetric end result. It was last used generally in 1992, but it accidentally appeared on an episode of Johnny Bravo in 1997 and was revived for The Powerpuff Girls in 1998, then replaced by the Cartoon Network pencil test when H-B closed for good and production moved to CN's Burbank studios. A variant of the "Swirling Star" design without the rainbow coloration was also used as a logo for Taft International Pictures from 1981-87.
  • In the early '90s, they dropped the Star altogether (at least in Vanity Plate form) after the studio's purchase by Turner Broadcasting. It was replaced by a script "Hanna-Barbera" (introduced in 1988), which was combined with pictures of H-B characters in a rectangle (or an oval on Swat Kats and The Halloween Tree) (usually the ones from the preceding show), along with H-B sound effects in the background. They took this a step further in 1994, with CG animated logos with Hanna-Barbera characters in motion. There were two versions, comedy and action, the latter best known for its accidental presence at the end of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!'s mid-'90s prints. When Hanna-Barbera was wound down to little more than Cartoon Network's original programming unit in the late '90s, the early '90s static logos were revisited, except with ovals instead of rectangles (on some shows, rectangles were used instead of ovals). There are versions of these where the logo irises out and the Cartoon Network logo zooms up in its place.
  • For the shows made in the 1990 season (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures, Rick Moranis In Gravedale High Wake, Rattle & Roll, Tom and Jerry Kids, and Yo Yogi!), a special ending vanity plate with Fred Flintstone was used to denote the 30th anniversary of The Flintstones.
  • Despite the demise of Hanna-Barbera as a standalone studio, properties associated with the company still use the name and have even resurrected past logos. Movies in the Scooby-Doo Direct-to-Video Film Series produced from 2003-2009 featured an HD remake of the second variant of the "HB Box" logo. A new logo introduced in 2017 is basically an HD remake of the "Rainbow HB" logo, albeit with a different design for the "HB".
• Harpo Studios is the company formed by television personality and entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey, which is her first name spelled backwards. In the first version of the logo, which debuted in 1986, a cartoon version of Oprah wearing a lavender jacket and a yellow shirt pulls in a wagon with the text "HARPO PRODUCTIONS INC." with the "O" in "HARPO" slanted and "PRODUCTIONS INC." appearing below it. She stops and the wagon bumps into her shaking the word "HARPO" and she takes a bow afterwards. The logo was accompanied by an 11-note violin fanfare.
• Henry Winkler/John Rich Productions was the production company behind the original MacGyver (1985) on ABC, in association with Paramount Television; one half of the label was the famous actor who was known for being Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli on Happy Days from 1974-84 (Henry Winkler). This label was also known for a short-lived ABC comedy, Mr. Sunshine, in early 1986. Specifically, the logo (the most-remembered variant of it) had the first names Henry and John in a thick white rectangle on top on a blue screen, with a fair amount of space between them; in the middle were the last names Winkler and Rich in an unknown-style font, and below was "Productions" in a thinner white rectangle. Between "Henry" and "John" (just to the left of "John"), going under the "R" in "Winkler," and just passing the T in "Productions," there was a slash mark that looked like a needle; when the needle intersected the rectangles, there was some blue negative space. The logo faded out, then "In Association With" was shown, and then that credit and the blue screen faded out, giving way to either Paramount Television's Blue Mtn. logo (1986-87) or CGI Mtn. (1987-92). Originally, on the pilot, this logo was against film of MacGyver working the light switches; the end titles faded out, giving way to Paramount's Blue Mtn. logo. Also, the logo was, for one episode, against a black screen. Finally, the logo had no "In Association With" credit at all in the first season (1985-86); it appeared, faded out, and then the Paramount logo showed up and faded in.
• Hollywood Pictures: This Disney subsidiary had a sphinx. And given it released a fair share of clunkers, there was even a joke that "If it's the sphinx, it stinks!"
• Hughes Entertainment: A stylized capital H with a five-point star in place of the horizontal connecting stroke, with "HUGHES" in small letters directly underneath. Known among fans as the "Star of Boredom".
• Imagine Entertainment: Production company founded by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.
  • The first logo has "IMAGINE" rising from the centre of the screen as if from a body of water with accompanying reflection, and "AN" above the "IMAGINE" and "ENTERTRAINMENT PRESENTATION" (or "FILMS ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTATION") below the reflection. (Another variation simply "ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS" beneath.)
  • The second logo, first seen at the beginning of The Nutty Professor (1996), shows a drop of water falling into a pond with a reflection of the word "IMAGINE" appearing to a theme composed by James Horner.
• ITC Entertainment went through four iterations featuring modifications of its "stacked diamonds" logo:
  • The first iteration zoomed in on a compass rose, flipped it over to reveal a sinusoidal projection map of the world, which then zoomed out and duplicated to form three stacked "diamonds", with the letters I, T, and C, from top to bottom, inside.
  • The second version featured spinning "flowers" (or pinwheels), from which the diamond-shaped "petals" would spin off and rearrange themselves until they became the ITC logo, which was revised to add depth. A different theme was used for this version. This version served as the ident for ITC Film Distributors only.
  • The third version had the ITC logo (in white) zoom in from the center of a spinning object composed of the logo's diamond shapes, one each in red, green, and blue, on a space background. The first version's theme was used. This version is familiar to those of us who grew up with The Muppet Show.
  • The final version had the letters ITC, rendered in gold, slide into place on a back background one at a time from behind a revised stacked-diamond logo that spun in place until the C stopped. The music was simplified, reduced to a short synthesized piece ending with a “CLANG!”.
• Jackhole Industries: Founded by Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Carolla and Daniel Kellison. Producers of The Man Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Andy Milonakis Show and Crank Yankers, among others.
  • The logo originally showed a goofy animated donkey situated in the “O” of the title and yelling “hee haw!” But a later version plays a few notes from "La Cucaracha" as the donkey jumps down into the hole of the “O” and yells “Yokozuna!” In a later season of The Man Show, Jimmy and Adam introduced an idea concocted by one of their friends: sitting on the face of a sleeping buddy, giving him the rudest of awakenings. The friend who did that screamed “Yokozuna!” as he made the face-plant, thus coining the name.
  • In closing for Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the donkey was branded on the butt, causing it to jump into the “O” before falling with the letter around his neck, then it brays.
• Jerry Bruckheimer Films had two logos
  • As Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Films, it has footage of the time-lapse clouds where two lightning bolts strike in the center, revealing to be in a box with the company name below.
  • After Don Simpson's death from drug-related heart failure, the company was renamed to Jerry Bruckheimer Films, we speed down a deserted road in a remote part of Oregon with thunderstorm clouds brewing above. As the camera encounters a leafless tree on the side of the road, lightning strikes it, forming leaves on it, as the footage freezes and zooms out in a box, revealing the company name, sequels to films Bruckheimer co-produced with Simpson would still use the previous logo out of respect to him.
• The Jim Henson Company: Used to have a laser writing something that flipped up to reveal it was a metallic 2-D Kermit head that filled with color and then shrunk into a buzzing point of light which produced Henson's signature logo. Their film subsidiary Jim Henson Pictures used one of Kermit operating a movie camera (with the logo on the side), which zoomed out on a camera platform. Then the platform slammed to a halt and Animal's voice said "Sorry!" Sadly, they can't use these any more because the Muppets are now Disney properties. They currently show a spider-like creature chasing a dragonfly (based on doodles by Jim Henson) for their children's productions and a revival of the old Henson Associates "ha!" logo for their adult ones.
• John Charles Walters Company: Founded by former MTM writers, this company's only products of note were the sitcoms Taxi and the (short-lived) The Associates with Martin Short. "Walters" didn't actually exist,^note The "Charles Walters" name was a Line-of-Sight Name, with "John" tacked on because a Charles Walters existed in real life but the plate shows the back of a man (portrayed by series producer Ed. Weinberger) leaving his office for the night. His off-screen female secretary cheerfully says "Goodnight, Mr. Walters!" and he just grunts in reply. (In a Taxi Christmas episode, the secretary says "Merry Christmas, Mr. Walters!", and recieves the same grunt.)
  • Taxi planned a retrospective episode (i.e. a clip show) in which the previously unseen secretary would stop Mr. Walters as he left the office, and show him Taxi clips ostensibily for his approval — but although it got as far as casting Molly Cheek as the secretary, the idea was scrapped.
• Klasky-Csupo actually had three plates:
  • One in use from 1991-1998, which had various objects forming the letters in "KLASKY" and scribbles writing in "CSUPO". It was retired as of The Rugrats Movie for a new vanity plate. Another one made its only appearances on Rugrats Go Wild and The Immigrants: a city skyline with a green sky has a rooster who wakes up, screaming "WAKE... UP!!!", before the Sun gets brighter and brings forth the Klasky-Csupo logo (it looks different than it does in the other logos; it's an off-kilter print version which dates to at least 1999).
  • The new vanity plate was rather surreal. Ink splattered on the screen, revealing a Nightmare Face saying the company name and having the logo blocks shoot out of its mouth, then that sequence switches off like a TV and we see the Klasky-Csupo logo with an assortment of cartoon sounds in the background. Despite scaring several kids in the 1990s and the early 2000s, it was a Long Runner and was used from 1998 to 2008, but was eventually revived when Klasky-Csupo created a web series called RoboSplaat that gave the face an official name, Splaat.
  • In the third logo which was only seen in Rugrats Go Wild! and Immigrants, there is a city silhouette, with a rooster on one of the buildings and a few palm trees on the right. The sun rises, revealing the city (which is green) and the rooster. The rooster wakes up and opens its eyes (from the previous logo, as evidenced by yellow edges around them). It crows loudly as its eyes bulge and the blocks in the K-C logo float around.
• Langley Productions: 3 variants exist: the first was the early '80s Barbour/Langley Logo which featured the names in hot pink sliding in from the sides of the screen with an accompanying tune that creeped many of us for years. Fortunately, once Langley took over the graphics changed to where "Langley" would either slide or form in with a Blues-Rock riff. Currently, it's a different riff with a flash revealing the logo.
• Litton Entertainment is a syndication company that airs live-action educational programs across all of America's broadcast networks, rendering them the figure of blame for the end of Saturday Morning Cartoons in America. With its current logo, a spark flies across the screen from left to right, then flies closer to the screen, turns, and flies from right to left, revealing a dark cloudy/sunset background as well as the word "LITTON", which is tilted to the side a bit but turns around to face the viewer. "ENTERTAINMENT" fades in below, and the logo shines. The logo also calls out Litton's parent company Hearst Entertainment at the bottom.
• Little Airplane Productions: Josh Selig's company that created Oobi and Wonder Pets!, among others.
  • The first logo shows a girl running on a bridge (taken from the Sesame Street skit, "I'm A Little Airplane!") on a black background with the company name above and the URL adress below, as a girl says something along the lines of, "Little Airplane!" which differs depending on the show. A short variation with an animated butterfly exists.
  • The current variant features a red emblem with a old fashioned plane inside bounce in with the company name in it, as the girl from before once again says, "Little Airplane!"
• Looney Tunes: Hebede-hebede-hebede-that's all folks!
• Lucasfilm has always had its understated vanity plate of the metallic company logo on a black background with light passing across it, but starting with The Mandalorian, a special Star Wars-specific vanity plate has been added as well. Various droid faces and helmets from across Star Wars appear in metallic relief against a black background with red or blue lighting passing across them as a gentle fanfare starts and builds into a crescendo, finally concluding with the Star Wars logo in similar metallic relief as the fanfare resolves into a variation of the opening notes of the franchise's famous fanfare. The vanity plate reappeared for Star Wars: The Bad Batch, this time with droids and helmets more specific to the show's early Empire time period, suggesting that the visuals will change to match each future production that uses this vanity plate. There has so far been no word on if the vanity plate is just for Star Wars works wholly original to Disney+, or if it's going to be used for other Star Wars works post-Skywalker saga, such as theatrical films.
• Mad Cow Productions: Production company of Madeleine Smithberg, co-creator of The Daily Show. A cow has its head poking over a fence, with voice a saying "The cow says...", then a baby says "Moo!", then laughs. The cow's eye then rolls back into its head.
• Mandalay Entertainment: A black & white video of the sun shining through trees in a jungle in Mandalay, Myanmar. The camera pans down towards the bottom of the jungle, where a colorized tiger emerges. It walks towards the camera as a box zooms-out and surrounds its head. In a "slashing" effect, the tiger's head turns into a stylized drawing of itself. The text "mandalay (in a script font) fades in, followed by "ENTERTAINMENT" below. The logo then fades out.
• Mark VII Limited: Jack Webb's company, made his Police Procedural shows such as Dragnet and Adam-12, and Fire Department Procedural Emergency!. The logo consisted of a pair of hands holding a hammer and chisel; the hammer strikes the chisel producing roman numeral VII, with logo showing Mark VII Limited. The hands were not Jack Webb's (as commonly believed), but those of Harold C. Nyby, Jack Webb's construction foreman. "Mark VII" doesn't mean anything: some sources claim Webb chose it because he liked the look of the Roman numerals, while one source claims it was made up over coffee one day.
  • The company's logo was parodied in The Simpsons in the opening to "Treehouse of Horror XV", with the tentacles of Kang (or possibly Kodos) hammering "XV" on the screen. It was done to reflect the credits sequence for the made-up sitcom Keepin' It Kodos.
  • Also parodied at the end of The Three Stooges short Blunder Boys, where Moe hammers "MARK VII 1/2 - THE END" into Larry's forehead.
  • Woody Woodpecker also did a parody in "Under the Counter Spy", where the man accidentally hits his thumb with the hammer and yells in pain, then lifts the chisel to reveal the ending card.
• Marvel Studios: Originally, the logo consisted of the Marvel logo that was already in place since 2002's Spider-Man, just with the word "Studios" forming below "Marvel." Starting with Thor: The Dark World, it got a new logo to differentiate its films from movies merely associated with the brand, with the comic pages falling on an already-formed logo before ending it just like before. It then debuted a new logo in Doctor Strange (2016) which is way more distinct, it begins like the usual "comic pages falling down" plate used in most Marvel productions from the Turn of the Millennium onwards, until illustrations of the core film characters appear next to script pages of the MCU's most famous lines.^note "There was an idea...", "I am Iron Man", "I've got red in my ledger", "That's my secret, Captain...", "We are Groot", and "I can do this all day." A shot of Captain America tossing his shield at the screen, taken from The First Avenger, transitions to scenes from the other MCU movies being projected on the sides of the logo until it is fully revealed. Because new heroes are continuously added with each film, the logo clips are refreshed for each new Marvel Studios release to include recent additions; since the debut of the current plate, later iterations have added Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Gamora, Black Panther, & Okoye in prominent positions. Infinity War and Ant-Man & the Wasp also turn the backdrop black at the end and highlight the "I" and "O" in "Studios" to form a red "10" to mark the decade since the May 2008 release of Iron Man.
  • Captain Marvel, the first film the studio released after Stan Lee's death, turned the opening into a tribute to him by making all the clips be of his cameos and behind-the-scenes clips, until the final part thereof where the backdrop itself is like the one from the two movies that preceded it, sans the red highlights; this was later carried on in Avengers: Endgame where, apart from being the movie with Lee's last cameo prior to his passing, the scenes and shots of the MCU characters snapped away in Infinity War are apparently left blank.
• MGM: Formed in 1924 from the merger of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures, its famous lion mascot was inherited from Goldwyn, who had been using it since 1916. When MGM began doing talkies, the lion acquired its equally famous roar. Several lions have taken turns inside the film ribbon circle; the most famous include Jackie (who appeared on black-and-white films from 1928 to 1956), Tanner (who appeared on color films from 1934 to 1956), Leo (a Long Runner used between 1957 and 2021), and a new CGI lion highly based on Leo and accompanied by the text "Art For Arts Sake" turning into the traditional Ars Gratia Artis on other MGM logos from 2021 onwards. Like many other studios, they tried out a stylized version but theirs was only used on two films in 1968: The Subject Was Roses and 2001: A Space Odyssey (though it was kept as a print logo until 1982 and reused for various other MGM ventures). Leo the Lion eventually got his own animated sitcom, The Lionhearts.
• Michael Jacobs Productions: Famously known for several ABC TGIF programs (most famously Boy Meets World). Its logo is simply the company's name with a soothing guitar riff.
• Michael Sloan Productions: As seen on his various TV projects, the actual logos vary but they all have the same basic layout - a still picture of writer-producer Sloan posing with the star(s) of the show/TV movie (Lee Van Cleef for The Master, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum for The Return Of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., etc), with "Michael Sloan Productions" written across the screen in Sloan's handwriting. Even the Canadian-produced episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents weren't immune, with Sloan posing in profile alongside the one of Hitch. Talk about a Vanity Plate... Here's one from the TV movie "Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman". Yes, that is Sandra Bullock.
• Miramax Films:
  • A shot quickly revealing the Manhattan skyline at evening, then dissolving to the Miramax logo. Redesigned in 2009, which removed the World Trade Center which was destroyed in 9/11.
  • Earlier, it used an "M" zooming out and then to the right revealing the company name, then the black background turning into a large "M".
  • Starting with Halloween (2018), the logo's text is now formed by a blue aurora over a city as seen from space, bringing to mind both of the logos mentioned above.
• Mohawk Productions: The company behind The Oblongs, The George Lopez Show, and The Drew Carey Show featured a logo with an ultrasound of a baby who giggles. This is accompanied by a quick drum beat.
• Monkeypaw Productions: Seen on works produced by and involving Jordan Peele.
  • Key & Peele shows a static picture of a table full of crumpled papers, with a torn-off hand from a monkey doll forming the "M" in "MONKEYPAW" next to some scattered letters. Jordan Peele sings a ditty in the background ("I gotta do my one line here!"). Throughout the series' run, it appeared side-by-side with the vanity plate for Keegan-Michael Key's company, Cindylou, Inc.
  • Starting with The Last O.G. and BlacKkKlansman, this was changed to a stop-motion clip of camera passing through a train car carrying eccentricities, stopping at a floating monkey's paw stirring a teacup (referencing Get Out (2017)) in one of the seats.
• Mosfilm had a shorted filmed view on a reproduction of the sculpture Worker and Kolkhoz Woman.
• MTM Productions/Enterprises: Company founded by Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore (for whom it was named), it produced a vast outpouring of quality television, starting with the classic The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
  • Its logo, well-known to several generations of TV viewers, was Mimsie the MTM kitten, a parody of Leo the MGM lion. In Mimsie's initial appearances at the end of The Mary Tyler Moore Show she simply meowed, but other MTM productions often added animated overlays and/or new sound tracks that were specific to the show. See the long list of such variants at Logo Joke.
  • The original "Meow" logo was also used on such series as The Bob Newhart Show and WKRP in Cincinnati.
• Mutant Enemy Productions: Creators of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
  • The signoff is comprised of the words "Mutant Enemy" obviously hand-drawn in magic marker with a cardboard cut-out of a lurching zombie, also done in magic marker, crossing in front of it as Joss Whedon's voice intones "Grrr... argh."
  • The phrase "Mutant Enemy" comes from the song "And You And I" by Yes, and was the name Joss Whedon gave his first manual typewriter. The signoff itself was, according to Whedon, improvised at the last minute when he and his crew were told they needed one — hence its crude and simple appearance, which has only contributed to its popularity.
  • Robot Chicken also parodied this once when, after the regular Vanity Plate, the Mutant Enemy zombie starts attacking various people, and then it pulled out to show it was just Joss Whedon screwing around.

Film & Television Studios N–Z

• NBC: Originally just the letters NBC being lit up one-by-one to the network's three-tone jingle (most famously illustrated by a xylophone). When the network added color programming, it led into those programs with a flamboyant, rainbow-tailed peacock. During the 1960s, NBC changed its main logo to what is commonly known as the "NBC Snake" — the letters "NBC" spelled using a continuous line - which was still featured at the end of its programs.
  • In 1976 they changed their logo to a big "N" (which was promptly mocked by Saturday Night Live - and also was the subject of a lawsuit by a Nebraska educational station, which received nearly a million dollars' worth of new equipment from NBC in compensation). By the time the Big N debuted, all network programming was in color, so the animated peacock opening was retired.
  • In 1979, a simplified peacock was added to the Big N, forming the "Proud N". The logo was further simplified into its modern incarnation in 1986, retiring the Big N portion of the logo altogether.
  • The three-note jingle, by the way, is "G-E-C" — funny in hindsight, since for a while they were owned by General Electric Corporation, although the chimes predate GE's ownership by nearly six decades.
  • The most famous version of the original animated peacock, featuring a kaleidoscope-style animation. NBC self-parodied the peacock for the broadcast debut of A Hard Day's Night by introducing the Black and White Penguin, while Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In did their own parody, the Sneezing Peacock, which NBC later revived for a few blooper specials.
• Nelvana has used a polar bear as its mascot since 1978. Until 2004, the bear stood underneath an arc of stars. Since 2004, the studio's logo has the bear bump its nose on one star.
• Netflix got one once they started producing original series. The company's trademark 'ta-dum' sound made its debut with the 2013 variant, which featured a simple animation of the name emerging from a white void. The 2019 variant] switched the background to black and shortens the full name down to the ribbon-like "N" initial, zooming into the logo as it fills the screen with strands of warm light. ^note  TV and console versions of the Netflix app also use the 2019 variant as a boot logo, but start with the full name before closing in on the "N" initial.
  • The theatrical version of the 2019 plate reverses the order of the sequence, starting with a single strand of light and expanding out to fill the screen before zooming out to the fully-formed "N" logo. This variant skips the "ta-dum" and has a fanfare more in line with a traditional film studio, courtesy of one Hans Zimmer.
• Nuance Productions has the name appear on the screen, then a hand appears. With one finger the logo is shifted slightly upwards.
• One Ho Productions has an arguably creepy Al Hirschfeld caricature of Whoopi Goldberg.
• Oz Film Company: Co-founded by L. Frank Baum, this independent studio only produced five features and five short films in 1914-15 before folding; only four of the features partly survived, three of them being adaptations of Baum's Land of Oz books. Its logo features the disembodied head of Vivian Reed dressed up as Princess Ozma, the "floating head" effect achieved by dressing Reed in a black dress and using a black background. Some films have Reed much closer to the camera and missing her loose curls, and due to the studio experimenting with color tinting its films, the logo exists in various colors tints beside monochrome. This is another logo which some have found scary due to Reed's stare and lack of music. ^note (Soundtracks for silent movies were usually done live in the theater; the musicians may have provided musical accompaniment for the logo.)
• Paramount Pictures: A mountain surrounded by stars (usually 24, in reference to the number of big movie actors they had signed in The Silent Age of Hollywood), also known as "Majestic Mountain" or "Paramountain". During the Gulf & Western era, the mountain faded into a simplified dark-blue-and-white icon on a light blue background; this version of the logo was retired in 1987, replaced with an updated version of the "Majestic Mountain" which continued to be used following Viacom's acquisition of Paramount. The modern version usually features animated stars as they fly into the scene and take their place in formation around the mountain.
  • For The Ten Commandments, they substituted Mount Sinai in the logo.
• Paramount Television:
  • While Paramount had its own TV network in 1949-56 (and infamously co-owned Dumont), it didn't get its own TV division until Gulf+Western bought out Desilu Studios in 1967 and renamed it Paramount Televison the next year. Its first logo, a placeholder which lasted 9 months, was a simplified black and white version of the "Majestic Mountain" over a blue background which recycled the fanfare from the Desilu "Merging Circles" logo.
  • The next logo was the "Split Rectangle": over a yellow background is a blue rectangle split in two, the left-hand side having "Paramount Television" written in it and the right-hand side having the simplified "Majestic Mountain" in white and blue, which the camera zooms towards. The initial accompaniment was a majestic fanfare. In 1969, the yellow background became red and the mountain design was modified into the one eventually used for the movie studio and the next TV logo, albeit in white with a blue circle. The jingle was changed for a Dominic Frontiere theme nicknamed "Closet Killer" due to it being seen as more appropriate for a Jump Scare scene than for a production logo jingle. (The vanity plate for Andy Daly Productions, co-producers of Review, is an Affectionate Parody of this logo.)
  • In 1975, the simplified "Blue Mountain" logo used for movies was adapted for television by having "Television" slide under "Paramount". This one has two themes, one by Lalo Schifrin which was first used in 1970 to replace Frontiere's "Closet Killer" on the red "Split Rectangle" logo, and one by Jerry Goldsmith which debuted in 1977. There was a variation of this that started in 1982 (with a more bombastic jingle; the 1979 jingle was used on this as well on some shows, like Taxi) that used a form of the theatrical logo; in this one, "Television" intersected the mountain peak as it slid in under "Paramount" (the part of the "Television" word that touched the mountain peak was a brighter white, possibly due to chroma-keying). This version had a similarity to the popular closing logo of 20th Century Fox Television, in that the "Television" part imposed itself on the actual theatrical logo.
  • By 1987, the television division began using still versions of the then-current movie logos accompanied by a reorchestration of the last few notes of "Paramount on Parade" which sounds suspiciously like the Star Wars theme, which is ironic given Paramount once owned Star Trek. Following the 2005 Viacom-CBS split, Paramount Television merged with CBS Productions to become CBS Paramount Television (with logos featuring both the "CBS Eye" and the Paramount "Majestic Mountain", in the process retiring the 1987 Paramount fanfare except for occasional plastering errors on DVD), which was renamed CBS Television Studios in 2009 and CBS Studios in 2020, after Viacom and CBS had reunited.
  • In 2015, Viacom revived Paramount Television with a logo which is basically the tail end of the theatrical logo, except with "Television" written under "Paramount".
• PBS: The network had several memorable plates for the end of their programs from way back when it was known as NET. Some think some are scary, judge for yourself with this montage of bumpers.
• Public TV For East Tennessee: Until the mid-1990s, the logo for WSJK (now WETP) was a stylized Two known as the "Ugly TWO" and the logo for WKOP was a 3-D number 15 known as the "'70s-style 15". The Ugly TWO was used as a station ID by itself in the late '80s as well as with the '70s-style 15 in the early to mid '90s. Both logos were used in the sign-on and sign-off screen until late 2002.
• Peter Hannan Productions: Appearing at the end of CatDog the logo simply showed a pig standing on its hind legs with a piece of straw in its mouth and green cowboy hat standing right next to the name "PETER HANNAN PRODUCTIONS". When Nickelodeon began to push the credits for its shows back the sound of a fly buzzing was added to the logo.
• Pixar:
  • The studio's mascot, Luxo Jr., hops across the stage, then jumps onto the letter I in the name, flattens it, then looks at the audience in embarrassment. Taken from Pixar's first short, in which Luxo Jr. jumps onto and deflates a ball in the same way. At the end of each film, the sequence is repeated, with the light snapping off or fading out after Luxo Jr. faces the camera.
  • A variation comes after the closing credits of WALL•E: after Luxo Jr. squashes the I and turns to the camera, its light bulb burns out. WALL•E rolls into view, changes the bulb, pats Luxo Jr. on the "head", and starts to roll away. However, WALL•E then knocks over the letter R in Pixar, and is forced to take its place by bending his body into the shape of an R. Luxo then turns once more to the camera and the lights go out. The MegaCorp in the film's backstory, Buy-N-Large, has its own Vanity Plate, which appeared after this Logo Joke as The Stinger. This logo consists of several ovals with the BnL letters over them and a choir saying, "BNL!!!"
  • Revised as of Up and re-releases of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, initially done for the 3D versions in 2009. The same basic scene but starting with the camera facing from the left on the letters which are now shown to have depth. The camera rotates around back to the front as Luxo hops in.
  • CollegeHumor has a parody of this.
• R&D TV: Company formed to produce Battlestar Galactica, its only show as of this writing. Its signoff features versions of Ron Moore and David Eick ("R" and "D") animated in a style reminiscent of Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, taking turns mutilating each other. Thanks to some twisted soul somewhere on the Net, you can see a collected set of these clips here, or check out this article from Wired magazine.
• The Rank Organisation: Naked guy hitting a gong.
• Rankin/Bass Productions: Creators of numerous well-remembered animated Christmas specials in the '60s and '70s (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer being the first and arguably most popular of these.) Their classic '60s-'70s logo has an upright rectangle and two circles popping up to form a stylized overlapping "R" and "B" over a white background, accompanied by the words "A Rankin Bass Production".
• Renaissance Pictures: Sam Raimi's company, and masters of the Nineties Adventure Show. Its short-lived first logo, appearing only on M.A.N.T.I.S., consisted of the company's name hovering over Earth, as the sun rises behind it and makes a "whoosh" sound. It was dispensed of by the end of 1994 for a more infamous one. At the end of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Cleopatra 2525, Jack of All Trades and Legend of the Seeker, viewers are treated to a sequence of a Mona Lisa-like portrait being ripped in half by an unseen force and thrusted toward the viewer, accompanied by lightning bolts and eerie chanting. After that, a lightning bolt causes the company's name (fashioned differently from before) to appear. A shortened version exists on the short-lived American Gothic (1995), which excises the Mona Lisa sequence.
• Reveille Productions: Co-producer of such shows as The Office (US) and Ugly Betty. A soldier is shown playing a trumpet in white silhouette.
• RKO Pictures: The main logo for the smallest of the Big 5 movie studios featured a radio tower atop a rotating globe emitting lightning bolts and soundwaves as "An RKO Radio Picture" ("A Radio Picture" in early films) appears letter-by-letter on either side of the tower. Accompanying the action was a Morse code message, "VVV A(N RKO) RADIO PICTURE VVV". The closing logo was a triangular badge with a thunderbolt cutting through it and the words "(RKO) Radio Pictures" above it; Walt Disney and Samuel Goldwyn movies distributed by RKO used it as an opening logo.
• Roundelay was the vanity card of David Jacobs, executive producer of Knots Landing. It started in 1980, and its first version (which started in Season 2; Season 1 simply had a text credit on the closing credits) was simply the Roundelay name in a blue neon semicircle that curved up and then back down; that had "A Roundelay Production In Association With" below it, before going to the Lorimar logo of the time. In 1985, Michael Filerman became a co-executive producer with Jacobs, and his initials "MF" in yellow-green were added under the Roundelay semicircle; the line on the previous version was updated to read "A Roundelay-MF Production In Association With," which would, for one season, be followed by the previous Lorimar logo, and in later years, the Lorimar-Telepictures and Lorimar Television logos. This logo also appeared on Dallas, but not on the series itself; rather, it was on the 1986 prequel movie The Early Years. Later series that Roundelay had a hand in would simply have the Roundelay text credit of before, before the logo made one final appearance on Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-De-Sac in 1997.
• Saban Entertainment/Saban Brands: Best known for Power Rangers.
  • Its first logo was a black planet with rings around it with "SABAN" on the rings in a Pac-Man-like lettering style, with "PRODUCTIONS" below that. Five lines are on the bottom left hand side of the planet.
  • A new plate was adopted in 1988, which featured a white marble square with a round hole in it, with "SABAN" in the hole, and, depending on the version, "ENTERTAINMENT" or "INTERNATIONAL" below the hole. A gold plate spins in from the left of the screen while the square comes in from the right. The plate affixes itself into the hole, and three black lines draw themselves on the bottom left corner of the plate.
  • The final Saban Entertainment plate, used from 1996 to 2002, features children in odd-looking clothing lying on the ground, which fades to show them holding a large, golden cloth, which fades to show them floating above an Earth globe with yellow water and red and green land, over a sky background. The children are holding balls of various colors, and golden light rushes around the globe until the globe and kids disappear, with the light forming a simplified version of the logo from 1988, with "SABAN" below it. This reveals that the clouds in the sky are being sucked into the center.
  • The first logo for Saban Brands, introduced with Power Rangers Samurai, has a red ribbon in space flying to form the 1996-2002 logo, set to a guitar riff.
  • When episode 3 of Power Rangers Ninja Steel premiered, a new logo was introduced, in which a glass globe, filled with liquid gold, turns into the Saban logo. An extended version of this logo is used on Power Rangers (2017).
• Schneider's Bakery is the production studio of producer Dan Schneider. On the logo for his studio, a white oven against a green background opens up to reveal a lot of smoke and the text "Schneider's Bakery" in a retro-style orange font comes out, followed by an "Mmmm!" sound (presumably provided by Schneider himself).
• Screen Gems:
  • The name, inspired by Columbia Pictures' 1920s slogan "Gems of the Screen", was first used for Columbia's in-house animation unit which started out as Charles Mintz's studio in 1929 and began using the Screen Gems name in 1933 after Columbia acquired a stake in it. Mintz sold his studio entirely to Columbia shortly before his death in 1939 and the name was kept until the studio was shut down in 1946 and Columbia began distributing UPA's cartoons instead. In that era, the Screen Gems name was only used on-screen in the copyright notices, with cartoons often opening and/or closing with an animated version of the Columbia Torch Lady.
  • The name was then reused for Columbia's television division in 1948 as a way to distance it from its parent company, as most movie studios of the time saw television as a threat to their business and wanted nothing to do with it. Its first proper logo, a TV screen bearing the company name, debuted in 1952. Starting in 1955, Columbia began reducing its distance from its TV division by using the Torch Lady logo for Screen Gems with a byline stating that it was a division of Columbia. In 1963 debuted the "Dancing Sticks" logo, with colored sticks bouncing about and rainbow circles flashing to reveal "Screen Gems", all to a jazzy brass tune.
  • The "Filmstrip S" logo, designed by Tom Geismar of Chermayeff & Geismar, was first used by the TV division in 1965 in a logo which came to be known as the "S from Hell". Over an orange background, two red parallelograms come from the top and bottom and curl around a circular area in which a red dot appears, forming an "S" which looks like two spools of film merged together as "Screen Gems" zooms in below. The musical accompaniment, performed by Eric Siday on one of the very first Moog synthesizers, consists of six ascending "French horn" notes followed by two "trumpet" arpeggios; it was later shortened in 1970 to three notes and two arpeggios. The combination of the simple animation and strange music nonetheless proved very frightening to many viewers, especially children, some of whom have reported nightmares inspired by it; it became one of the most notorious "scary logos" alongside Viacom's "V of Doom" and even spawned a mockumentary-horror style film entry for the Sundance Film Festival. The TV division was renamed Columbia Pictures Television in 1974, but Siday's infamous jingle was retained for its first logo which was used until 1977.
  • The name was resurrected yet again, alongside the "Filmstrip S", for a new specialty film division in 1999. Its first logo, seen here, acquired the "S from Heaven" nickname due to it being seen as much more calming than the old "S from Hell" (though some films use a red version which remind some of the "S from Hell"). Somebody at Sony must have taken notice, as a second logo debuted in 2011 featuring the logo floating above clouds, i.e. "in heaven".
  • A special variant for The Covenant took the “S from Hell” name quite literally, as it is tinted orange, made to look like fire, and fades out like a flame.
• Shaw Brothers, the largest production company to exist in Hong Kong, has one resembling a shield with the company's initials on it (loosely inspired by Warner Bros'), appearing with fanfare over a glassy-looking background. This particular logo has appeared before practically all Shaw productions throughout the 1960s to 1980s before it phases out. In the late 2010s when the studios start re-releasing their older films (after their founder's passing) a slightly modernized, 3D version of the logo would be used instead.
• Snee-Oosh Inc. who developed Hey Arnold! among other shows. On their first logo from 1996, a totem pole bird surrounded by a yellow haze appears against a brown background with wooden letters of the company's appearing below. Shortly after Nickelodeon began pushing its credits to the side at the end of shows, the logo was accompanied by a chorus that sang the company's name followed by a strange flute-like whistle and an "ooh" sound that continued into Nickelodeon's logo afterward. It also appears in the Ready Jet Go! credits, but without the original logo music.
• Sony Pictures Television: Successor to Columbia-TriStar Television, which was infamous for its ubiquitous "Boxes of Boredom" logo. Sony Pictures Television's logo first appeared in 2002, and is nicknamed the "Bars of Boredom" (it has achieved the same ubiquity the Boxes had, mainly by replacing logos on older shows, which the Boxes did as well). The omnipresence of the Boxes and Bars of Boredom as well as Sony's plastering have made them The Scrappy of logo fans. The logo consists of "SONY PICTURES TELEVISION" zoomed up to the screen in front of a very bright light. The words zoom out as the light condenses itself into a symbol featuring twelve bars with the light in them. The more common short version doesn't start with the extreme close-up on the company's name, and the music is a majestic, triumphant five-note fanfare. The longer version prefaces it with a "fluttering" sound, played by a piano.
• Starburns Industries, a production studio founded by Dan Harmon and Dino Stamatopoulos that's responsible for shows like Rick and Morty, has a still image of a cartoon chef and the studio's name below it accompanied with accordion music (or in silence) and a man saying "It's a good show!" in an Italian accent. Some variants have the man saying something different based on the episode of the show (usually happened on episodes of Mary Shelley's Frankenhole).
• Starry Night Productions: Reinhold Weege's production company for Night Court has an animated logo showing a star flashing brightly (accompanied by a loud clapping sound) and fading, revealing a blacked-out nighttime Chicago skyline (Weege was a native Chicagoan). The loud clap is followed by an elongated Scare Chord on electric organ and the sound of a man laughing heartily, not to say maniacally. The same guy can often be heard on the show's Laugh Track.^note The guy was Reinhold Weege's father, Chuck, who attended every taping of the show until his death.
• Stephen J. Cannell Productions: Producers of such shows as The A-Team, Hardcastle and McCormick, Riptide, Wiseguy, Hunter, and 21 Jump Street. First seen on The Greatest American Hero (he became an independent producer in 1980 but like Clint Eastwood,^note whose Malpaso production company, unusually, has never had a screen or print logo his company was logo-less until 1982).
  • It starts with live action footage of Cannell himself at a typewriter in a well-appointed study. The camera then does an Orbital Shot from his face to his back, at which point he pulls the sheet of paper out of the typewriter and throws it over his head. The live paper turns into an animated sheet, which floats downward onto an animated stack, the top sheets of which curl upward and form a "C". The text "Stephen J. Cannell Productions" or "Cannell Entertainment Inc." then appears above.
  • It was updated through the years, with his Emmy and other awards added to his office among other things. In earlier versions he was smoking a pipe.
  • When he died, Castle paid him tribute.
  Stephen J. Cannell. Colleague. Mentor. Friend. We'll miss you, pal.
• Stoopid Monkey: Seth Green's production shingle. The plate at the end of Robot Chicken until Season 5 was different each time, with a still-frame cartoon monkey engaging in some reckless behavior, with a hooting sound effect, while Seth says, "Stupid monkey." Then the show switched to a neon cartoon monkey head with the same voice over for every episode. For a while, the logo went back to the original setup, but made the monkey rounder and cuter.
  • Its successor Stoopid Buddy Studios featured the monkey from the later logos running up to somebody and high-fiving them.
• Stretch Films: John R. Dilworth's New York-based studio has a crudely-drawn mouth with the company name written on its teeth as its production logo. The first four logos were still images, and an animated logo debuted in 1998 with the release of Dilworth's short, "Catch of the Day", which has the mouth laughing to reveal the company name on its teeth. It would later be used on the iconic Cartoon Network series, Courage the Cowardly Dog.
• Ten Thirteen Productions:
  • Best known for The X-Files, and Millennium (1996). A young boy's voice declares proudly "I made this!" over the sound of an old-fashioned movie projector, while the logo appears on a black screen. (The boy is Nathan Couturier, son of X-Files supervising sound editor, Thierry Couturier. The company name itself refers to the birthday of producer Chris Carter.)
  • This was mercilessly mocked by Stewart Lee and Richard Herring in their BBC2 series This Morning With Richard Not Judy
• Televisa is best known for its "Sparkling Sun" vanity plates, which feature a chime arpeggio as the network's logo — which is supposed to be a sun — appears in different ways, often with a voiceover saying "Televisa presenta:".
• THX used many variants of their familiar logo, but every single one of them uses a famous crescendo called the Deep Note - which, if you were a kid in the 80s, 90s, or 2000s first hearing it, may have been more of a Brown Note.
  • One of their trailers is lengthy but pleasant, involving fantastic sounds and music created by plantlife in the shape of the logo. Dubbed "Amazing Life".
  • There are many different variants of the THX logo, but the most famous one that many people remember seeing at the start of several Disney, Sony and MGM movies on VHS is one where a blue rectangle fades on screen, then text about how the movie is digitally mastered appears, followed by the THX logo fading in as well and shining. In theaters, the rectangle sequence is longer and "The Audience is Listening" is shown instead. On LaserDisc, a plaque under THX that reads LaserDisc and has an indent between Laser and Disc is attached.
  • Another one features a conductor's hand, which flicks a baton, shooting out a hyperspace conducted with an orchestral fanfare followed by the THX logo zooming in. During the THX logo zooming scene, we hear a more pleasant version of the Deep Note. This was parodied on Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation.
  • At the beginning of Soul Calibur 3, the Deep Note is performed by Galaga characters, since both games are owned by Namco.
  • The THX logo is featured in Over the Hedge; as the animals are breaking in for food, the TV/stereo system comes on with the ubiquitous noise, almost waking up the residents of the house.
  • Pixar made two variations shown in DVDs and later VHS tapes of their movies. In the first one the logo breaks down halfway and a robot repairman named Tex hovers in, opens a hatch on the side, goes inside and is heard hammering and drilling something. Then he comes out, closes the hatch and the logo resumes as normal. In the second version, Tex hooks a toy mooing box into the logo, making it sound like a large herd of cows, followed by the sound of a Thundering Herd, which scares him away.
• Toei Company: Film company best known for its Tokusatsu dramas, especially Kamen Rider and Super Sentai. Their vanity plate is a shot of their logo in front of waves crashing against rock formations.^note shot in Cape Inubō in Chiba Prefecture
  • Its animation side, Toei Animation, used four different logos. The first one, used throughout season 1 of The Transformers, is a still shot of their mascot Pero. In 1993, this was changed to a picture of a rainbow scribble, with "TOEI ANIMATION" appearing in metalic letters in an arc pattern. The third version, used from 1997-2016, is a 3D animation of bubbles combining into one space to form Pero's head. From 2016 onward, it was changed to a 3D animation of Pero jumping out of the frame of a film strip and posing in front of Earth, with the strip stretching around both Pero and the planet.
• Toho: A raised-shadow version of the Toho circle logo, accompanied with the full name of the company^note 東宝株式会社 Tōhō kabushiki gaisha, "Toho stock company"; while being bathed by a multicolored light from above. Variations of this vanity plate has been used since the fifties' launch of their Toho Scope widescreen system.
• TriStar Pictures:
  • The first logo from 1984 to 1993 had a Pegasus galloping to the front of the camera, grows wings, and flies off as the company name forms; we zoom out from the logo to find it in a triangle with a drawing of the Pegasus above the shape. A different logo with "TRI STAR" in large letters and the triangle placed next to "TRI" was used in 1991-93 in trailers and for the TV division.
  • The second logo from 1993 to 2015 where it takes place at night with dark clouds, a bright light forms a Pegasus which gallops towards the screen and stops to unfold his wings as the company appears above it. The final result shares some similarities with the Columbia logo introduced around the same time, most notably the cloud background and the font used for the company name; both studios are owned by Sony.
  • The current logo from 2015 onwards was created by JAMM VFX where the clouds and the sky are made more realistic, the light forms a fully CGI-animated Pegasus as night turns to day.
• UBU Productions: Of Family Ties and Spin City fame. A distorted photo of Ubu Roi, a black Labrador Retriever, is shown, where the canine is holding a frisbee. Producer Gary David Goldberg says the line, "Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog.", which is followed by Ubu's quick, single bark. Ubu was Goldberg's self-described "campus dog", and died in 1984.
  • Robot Chicken parodied this right beside their own vanity plates with a similar looking photo of a toy dog. Seth Green says, "Sit, Ubu, sit. Bad dog!", before the screen cuts to black, a shotgun sounds, and a dog whimpers.
  • Also parodied on The Hamster Wheel. Can be viewed here (profanities — probably Not Safe for Work) along with other parodies.
  • In BoJack Horseman, Ubu exists as a celebrity all on his own. Charlotte calls him 'the guy who sits' and Herb comments that he really is a good dog.
• Underdog Productions: The company behind American Dad! features a live-action security guard who smiles at the camera, gives a thumbs up, and says "Bye, have a great/wonderful/beautiful time!"
• United Plankton Pictures: is the production company of Stephen Hillenburg, creator of SpongeBob SquarePants. On the logo, several crudely animated plankton are seen holding hands against a watery background with the text "United Plankton" appearing above and "Pictures Inc." appearing below.
• Universal Pictures: Since its founding in 1912, it has always used a globe as its logo. Notable pre-1990 variants include the "Biplane Globe" (1927-36), the "Art Deco Globe" (1936-46), the "Universal-International Globe" (1946-64) and the "Zooming Globe" (1963-90, one of the longest-running movie logos). The 1990 revision introduced the basic "zoom away from the globe as the Universal letters rotate towards the front" concept which was reused in the 1997 and 2012 updates. The 75th anniversary of the opening of Universal City Studios in 1915 (1990) and the 100th anniversary of Universal Pictures (2012) saw special logo variants which began with a montage of past logos ("Biplane", "Art Deco" and "Zooming" in 1990; all three plus "Universal-International" and the 1990 and 1997 versions in 2012) and concluded with the then-newest logo with "75th/100th Anniversary" wording on it.
• Universal Television:
  • The roots of Universal's TV production arm go back to Revue Productions, established by MCA in 1943 to produce radio shows and USO Stage Door Canteen events. It began TV productions in 1950 and introduced the following year its first logo, featuring a rotating TV camera and a overdramatic horn fanfare weirdly reminiscent of the Jaws theme; it lasted a couple of years before being replaced by a simple "[Produced by/Filmed at] Revue in Hollywood" text.
  • Meanwhile, MCA-TV was founded in 1951 as a TV distribution arm. It first used a film reel with "MCA-TV" on it as their logo (as can be seen on Revue Productions' first logo above), switching in 1956 to the "Arrowhead" logo, a common sight on old prints of pre-1950 Paramount films as MCA had acquired the rights to them a few years after Paramount's 1948 antitrust lawsuit. From about the early 1980s until MCA-TV was merged into Universal Television in 1996 it used logos similar to the then-current movie logos.
  • After MCA purchased the Universal Studios lot in 1958, Revue Productions and the lot were renamed Revue Studios and a new logo debuted, "The Filmstrips", which had black-and-white and color versions (the latter featuring a wallflower pattern very much of its era) and featured a fanfare written by space-age pop legend Juan Garcia Esquivel and Universal music director Stanley Wilson which would be used by successor Universal Television in one shape or another until 1991. Here's a black-and-white example of the "long" version and here's a color example of the "short" version; a "blinking negatives" variant was used alongside co-producer logos.
  • When MCA acquired Universal's parent Decca Records in 1962, the TV division was renamed Universal Television; after a brief period of using a modified version of the "blinking negatives" Revue logo, the then-current "Zooming Globe" logo was adapted for television. Initially zooming like its movie counterpart, the globe became stationary by the early 1970s. The Esquivel-Wilson fanfare was rearranged roughly once every season; first using the "short" Revue theme (four-note intro, nine-note fanfare) in the 1960s, then one based on the nine-note fanfare in the early 1970s (which was sometimes worked into the end credits music, such as on Banacek, McMillan & Wife and other shows), then a five-note fanfare based on the four-note intro from 1975 until the "Zooming Globe" was retired in 1990. When the movie logo was updated in 1990 and 1997, the TV logo was updated accordingly, the 1990 version being a sped-up version of its movie counterpart with a fanfare based on the 75th Anniversary variant and the 1997 version being a near-still logo with a fanfare based on the first few notes of the movie fanfare.
  • When NBC and Universal merged in 2004, Universal Television became NBCUniversal Television, with a logo incoporating NBC trademarks (the peacock, a fanfare based on the "G-E-C" chimes) with the Universal globe motif. A 2011 rebrand of NBCUniversal led to a new logo which was derided for its lack of effort, being simply the company name in plain text appearing over a purple satin backdrop.
  • While the TV distribution arm still uses the NBCUniversal name, the TV production arm became Universal Media Studios in 2007 and the logo was updated accordingly. In 2011, the Universal Television name was resurrected complete with a snazzy new logo with a fanfare modified from the NBCUniversal one barely enough to be distinct. (A placeholder was used for a month which had the globe spinning the wrong way around).
• In arguably the ultimate example, the shortlived 1992-93 sitcom Camp Wilder (notable mainly for featuring Jay Mohr, Hilary Swank and Tina Majorino in early roles) came from a company called Vanity Logo Productions (the logo itself was the company name in front of a cresting wave).
• Russell Brand's production company takes this to the logical extreme by being called Vanity Projects, and having as its logo a crudely-drawn boy widdling and giving a thumbs-up.
• Very Good Productions: Ellen DeGeneres' production company, which produced her current talk show and Bethany, among others. In this logo, Ellen, wearing black pants and standing, is crossing her legs, while she says, "Anyway..."
• Viacom: The first incarnation of Viacom (now CBS Corporation) had many:
  • The first, used from 1971 to 1976, is commonly known as "Pinball". It featured the V-IA-COM segments of the company name sliding in from the right, in that order, as the background changes colors. VIACOM zooms back to reveal "A" and "PRESENTATION" on each side of it.
  • Its successor, nicknamed "The V of Doom", was used between 1976 to 1986. It can occasionally still be seen at the end of old prints of CBS programs, although for the most part it has been supplanted by the CBS Television Distribution logo (and occassionaly the 1995 Paramount Television logo on any surviving 90s prints of these shows). It began with the phrase "A Viacom Presentation" zooming in from the center of the screen, followed by a large purple V which fills most of the screen. Accompanying this is a five-note motif played by synthesized horns with a building timpani crescendo. As with the Screen Gems "S from Hell" logo, some viewers actually found the whole sequence frightening; have a peek of it on YouTube and see for yourself.
    • It's so infamous that some people have even made their own covers of the jingle and made spoofs to the point where the logo has become a meme in recent years.
  • Its successor, in use from 1986 to 1990, is commonly known as the "V of Steel". It started with the screen divided into a purple half and a silver half. The silver half turned itself upward, revealing itself to be the "V" from the previous logo, redone in CGI. The word "Viacom" (in the same typeface as before) fell down and landed under the V.
  • A completely new logo, which goes by the nickname "Wigga-Wigga", was used from 1990 to 1999. It starts with a V (different from before) over a blue background, which zig-zags (and makes "wigga-wigga" sounds, hence the nickname) and forms the word "VIACOM", which is then spoken by a booming male voice (rumored to be Don LaFontaine). (This logo was designed by Chermayeff and Geismar, also responsible for the Screen Gems "S from Hell" and the 1986 NBC Peacock). It was carried over to Viacom's final plate, used from 1999 to 2004. The "VIACOM" letters were made of glass and zoomed out over a blue background with the letterforms in it. "PRODUCTIONS" was under it, along with a Paramount byline.
• VID: A Russian TV studio best known for becoming Memetic Mutation with the Russians. Its logo consists of a vibrating line with a ball bouncing on it, then the ball explodes into a black background and an infamously scary-looking mask fades in along with a sinister jingle.
• Vidyashree Pictures: on Sadaa Suhagan, it has a green manji (a swastika, but it means good luck) in a box with, "VIDYASHREE FILMS" under it, with "PRESENTS" under that, all also green. The background is a calm ocean.
  • But on Kala Bazaar, we were treated to a color changing, spinning swastika that would stop as a orange manji with the company name under it in neon blue.
• Vin Di Bona Productions: Best known for America's Funniest Home Videos. The plate, which endured many updates over 21 years of use, consists of the "Vin Di Bona" script spinning around and unfolding. "PRODUCTIONS" will appear afterwards, though in recent years PRODUCTIONS has unfolded along with the rest of the name. Later on, the logo was dramatically revised, with the background turned red and the script redone. For many years the music was a bizarre synth ditty that attempted to sound cheerful but failed spectacularly, but the new revision saw it greatly toned down.
• VIZ Media has two: One, used throughout the '80's and '90's when it was just a distributor for other companies' shows and anime (see any opening for a Pokémon VHS), that had a gold, CGI brick swirling against a a starry backdrop with ominous music playing in the background until the brick stopped spinning and broke apart with an almighty crash as the individual plates that made the brick flew across the screen and formed the gold "V". Its modern logo is the words "Viz" colliding with a red block, which causes the red block to spin around, while traditional Japanese woodwinds play in the background until the logo freezes and the word "Media" fades right underneath "VIZ".
• Walt Disney Pictures:
  • Disney didn't really have a consistent one until 1985, when an animated, 2D, segmented (like many other logos of the era) Sleeping Beauty Castle made its debut in front of The Black Cauldron. It was revised in 1990, when the purple gradient inside the castle was removed. This may be the only example of a theatrical film company to use a stylized logo that stuck, in part because they had no iconic logo until then. The jingle based on "When You Wish Upon a Star" also led to new versions of that song in the follow-ups.
  • This logo was finally retired in 2006, when an elaborate computer animated sequence that featured a new castle that combined the features of Sleeping Beauty Castle and Cinderella Castle debuted in front of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (this version was done by visual effects company WETA Digital) and featured a steam train puffing in the background at the beginning of the plate as an allusion to Walt Disney's love for trains; Pixar movies prior to WALL•E use a (different) CGI variation of the castle.
  • It should be noted that from The Muppets (2011) onwards, the "Walt Disney Pictures" name in the logo was shortened to simply "Disney". This was ostensibly done for the sake of mobile devices.
  • To celebrate its 100th anniversary, Disney unveiled a new logo during 2022's D23 expo. It starts off exactly like the previous logo did, with two shining stars in the sky, only to reveal that it's a reflection on the river when the brightest star turns into a ball of light. It travels along the river, past the steam train and habitations, and up a waterfall, revealing a platinum-colored Disney castle on top from behind, with Mickey-shaped fireworks. The ball of light flies on ahead, changing the castle's colors into its normal coloration, completely transformed by the time we see the castle at its normal angle, and the magical arc flies from left to right instead of right to left like before. The words "Disney100" is written out while the slogan "100 Years of Wonder" fade in. Notably, this new logo also features cameos from Disney's iconography like Matterhorn Mountain and Pride Rock.
  • Walt Disney Animation Studios now has its own logo, perhaps to differentiate from Pixar films but more likely as a show of pride and legacy, featuring the iconic shot of Mickey Mouse whistling and steering the steamboat from Steamboat Willie, going from initial sketch to finished animation as it plays out.
  • Disney releases have used plenty of logos that differ greatly from the standard vanity plate. The following are the base versions of the logos:
    • The first of these for the company's initial Discovision and VHS/Laserdisc releases is nicknamed "Neon Mickey". The "Neon Mickey" logo depicted a spinning Mickey Mouse silhouette that changed colors while Walt Disney's personal signature in yellow was drawn out in front of it; after it finished, the words "Home Entertainment" appeared below it and came in, completing the logo; during the logo, a loud marching theme with snares in minor key is playing. The 1983 update changes the Disney logo to the corporate signature and the words to "Home Video".
    • A few international releases around this time didn't use a proper logo; instead, they used the short version of the 1981-1983 Walt Disney intro, with a "HOME VIDEO" banner tacked on at the end.
    • In 1984 the Walt Disney Classics series was created, and the first seven releases in this line featured a special opening for the tape in place of the Walt Disney Home Video logo; it used a spinning and dancing The Classics and Walt Disney Home Video logos ^note  A red Walt Disney Home Video logo appears first from the right, followed by The Classics in a neon white text while the Home Video logo circles into the background with a large black rhombus diamond animation appearing from the middle of the screen at the end ^note  At this point, the blue screen behind the logo (this and not the 1985 Walt Disney Pictures logo was the first time a blue screen was in a Disney logo) has shrunk into a four-corner diamond glow shape, and The Classics spins and lands in the upper half while the home video logo goes into the bottom, after which a white neon border closes in and seals the logos inside with a medieval synth jingle ^note  An organ note plays when the diamond appears playing instead.
    • In 1986, the "Neon Mickey" logo was replaced with the Sorcerer Mickey logo. This logo^note Animated by animatronic and Stop Motion artist Hal Miles of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Gremlins 2: The New Batch and Twilight Zone: The Movie opens with an image of Sorcerer Mickey like on the cases and labels of non-Classics titles appearing and a low tuba synth playing. The camera moves toward his left hand, which has a small spark getting ready to erupt, and eventually, it does, and begins spelling out Walt Disney in the red corporate font as Mickey disappears offscreen to the left. As the signature nears completion, the words "Home Video" in a different font from before (but still the color red) zooms out from the camera and settles under the signature, which then glows and flashes (some tapes also have the word "presents" appear under the logo); a very small jingle that has a hint of the "Walt Disney And You" theme plays across this logo. This is the same color logo from the covers of the Neon Mickey tapes and the Disney logo in the Classics diamond.
    • Come 1988 with the VHS/Laserdisc premiere of Cinderella, the "Cheesy Diamond" Classics logo was replaced with a Sorcerer Mickey Walt Disney Classics logo, which starts the same as the 1986 Walt Disney Home Video logo, but the corporate signature is drawn out in silver and a violin is playing furiously instead of a tuba synth; a four-corner gem-like rhombus diamond then appears in the background as the word Classics in Binner EF font (the same font used in the diamond on the case and tape label) and the C and S bookending it a little bit taller than the rest zooms in from the foreground. When everything lines up, a magic comet flies in from the lower-left, goes behind the diamond for a second, then comes back over the upper right of the diamond and passes over it, turning the Disney logo and the Classics logo gold before it flies off the right of the screen, during which a "diamond" jingle with chimes and, when the comet appears, synth trumpets and an organ, plays. The logo sticks around for a few seconds before fading out; this version has a gradient blue background and a more shiny, metallic sheen on the logo itself, as well as a white-only flash that appears when the larger comet turns the letters gold. On this release, the 1985 Walt Disney Pictures logo with Cinderella's castle (this one has a bluish tint to the logo) then follows, this being its first appearance as an opener on a Classics title. A remake of the logo for the next year's release, Bambi, changed the background to all-blue, smoothed out the lettering, made the diamond fully black inside, and had the white border of the diamond turn purple when the letters turn gold. With 101 Dalmatians in 1992, the logo was lightened and faded out quicker, and two releases later, for The Rescuers, the jingle over the logo got distorted.
    • In 1992, Disney began using a new Walt Disney Home Video logo that was short and gold, only having a shine effect and a violin crescendo over it.
    • The Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection logo for 1994-1999 started with the corporate Disney signature drawn out in bronze-gold on an arc, while bronze-gold "Masterpiece" and then "Collection" would zoom in; upon the letters almost lining up, Tinker Bell from Peter Pan would fly out of the middle of the screen, turn, and wave her wand to create a magenta back plaque with a gold border and a silvery Cinderella's Castle between "Masterpiece" and "Collection"; Tinker Bell would then fly off the left side of the screen, and the logo would flash once (this actually is a different shape from the emblem on the top of a general release tape; it has the same general shape as the emblem on the spine); during the logo, a remix of the Classics jingle plays that omits the opening violin and uses deeper, faster chimes (which sound more like bells) and a pure synth instead of trumpets. As for Tinker Bell, this exact same animation appears in the Roy Disney intro to demonstrate a laptop computer and is actually rotoscoped from the intro to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (a different Tinker Bell animation from Walt Disney Presents was on the Robin Hood Classics demo tape a decade prior); the Tinker Bell animation would later be used on the Disney's FastPlay screen on Disney DVDs whose printings started around the exit of CEO Michael Eisner and beyond. The general release Masterpiece titles had this logo after the F.B.I. warnings rather than before the movie,^note As mentioned above, if the tape was printed prior to Katzenberg's exit in August, instead of the Masterpiece Collection logo, the 1986 Walt Disney Home Video logo would play after the F.B.I. warnings and prior to the tape's commercials and a few general release VHS copies circa 1996 plus virtually all Masterpiece LDs that same year on replace the Masterpiece jingle with the 1992 distorted Walt Disney Classics jingle (it still omits the violin, and the jingle goes on a little longer with the ending organ note being prolonged); the logo would flash twice in this scenario (sometimes the logo with the Classics jingle is a different shade, making the magenta backing look completely purple.
    • The following Gold Classic Collection logo featured a belt-like plaque design with Cinderella's Castle in a circle towards the left with "Classic" under it, the words "Gold" and "Collection" sandwiching it, and the corporate Disney logo in gold above the belt with a regal blue background behind everything^note  The logo is similar in design to the Keurig Brewed seal from Green Mountain Coffee Keurig products, if that helps ; this logo was static, playing immediately after the starting F.B.I. warnings on every release, and it simply had the Gold Walt Disney Home Video jingle (a violin crescendo) as opposed to a Classics/Masterpiece Collection jingle remix (plus the logo didn't appear on many releases; videos and DVDs that didn't have it had the regular Gold Walt Disney Home Video logo).
    • In late 2001, Walt Disney Home Video was redubbed Walt Disney Home Entertainment. The new WDHE logo features the gold corporate signature zooming in against a shooting star background (blue for tapes and disks containing animation, black for strictly live-action tapes and disks^note  Much like how when the Gold Walt Disney Home Video logo was created, it was only used on tapes that were strictly live-action programs for its first three years; any tapes that contained animation or were part of the Disney Sing-Along Songs/Walt Disney Mini Classics/Disney Favorite Stories lines continued to use the 1986 Sorcerer Mickey Walt Disney Home Video logo (with movies in the Walt Disney Classics/Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection line during this period either having their line's logo or the Sorcerer Mickey logo on them until the final year of the Masterpiece Collection)) and reaching the top half of the screen while a glow under it forms into a gold arc with a star at the point of origin, after which the words "Home Entertainment" appear under the arc and complete the logo. The jingle that plays over this is a simple choral arrangement with a clash of cymbals when the words "Home Entertainment" appear.
    • At this same time, a DVD logo was created. There are several versions, all of which use a flute and violin flurry which gets loud and extravagant towards the end. The first version has a starburst that conjures up the silver/platinum letters in DVD, one by one, against a blue background. Then the starburst hits the top of the first D, and creates a silver circle around the right of the DVD logo while the corporate Disney signature without Walt appears on its upper left. The starburst streaks across the bottom of the screen, writing "Pure Digital Magic!", before the starburst stops in front of the screen, where it's revealed to be Tinker Bell from Peter Pan, then she flies off. The later version in 2005 has the starburst Tinker Bell conjuring up the D in Disney while it twists around. After the third pass, the entire Disney signature, which has a less metallic sheen to it much like the post 1988 Walt Disney Classics logos, would turn and go to the upper-left-center while the letters in DVD zoomed in. Then the circle-loop would be conjured, a plaque at the bottom that reads "Movies, Magic, & More!" would appear at the bottom, and Tinker Bell would do the same pose as before prior to the logo ending; later 2000's DVDs have fireworks added to the point of origin of the circle-loop, and that version of the logo is still used occasionally as of 2014. Likewise, there techcnially exist four versions of the Tinkerbell animation, with the first version being a CG animation used in the first two variants. The second version was a traditionally drawn animation of Tink. The third and final version went back to a CG animation, this time based on the Disney Fairies line of movies.
    • In 2004, we get Disney's FastPlay. This DVD feature was added in 2004 and, after the opening Walt Disney Home Entertainment logo, plays a screen with a static Disney DVD logo, with Tinker Bell emerging and turning it into the Disney's FastPlay logo while an announcer is talking (the Tinker Bell animation for this logo is recycled from the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection logo, which itself was rotoscoped from Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color; the Disney's FastPlay logo is identical to the Disney DVD logo except DVD is replaced with, of course, the word FastPlay and the loop is replaced with a disc graphic). The viewer is presented three choices on this screen; they can select the main menu, the FastPlay option, which runs the disc like a VHS (the trailers, Disney DVD logo, program, and bonus features will play in that order before going to the main menu), or do nothing, and after a few seconds, FastPlay starts automatically.
    • In 2007/2008, a new opening replaced the Walt Disney Home Entertainment logo. This opening is a slideshow of Disney movies up to this point and eventually ends in screens building the 2006 Disney castle, with "Movies, Magic, More" in the mix, all set to the Overture from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The castle graphic ends with the traditional arc, but only says "Disney". This is known as the "There is only one Disney" opening due to that being the final and key words from the narrator in this opening. The tune that plays over this is a full orchestra arrangement with chimes/bells over the castle.
    • Finally, there is the Disney Blu-ray logo, which starts similar to the 2006 Walt Disney Pictures logo, but as the camera reaches the front of Cinderella's Castle, the camera suddenly zooms out and leaves the castle behind in a blue Disney corporate signature while a laser beam etches out Blu-ray Disc on the bottom; meanwhile, two swooshes appear on both sides of the logo and the words "Magic in High-Definition" appear under it; the main Disney Blu-ray logo on the disc cover and case has the swooshes but only says "Blu-ray". The current Home Entertainment logo is identical to the Disney/Walt Disney Pictures logos in its two forms.
• Warner Bros.:
  • While it consisted of a basic reveal of the shield logo, the colour of said logo and the style of music used is genre appropriate. Harry Potter movies have it in brown for example, flying past the camera. If it's not tied in to the movie it's with, it'll usually be accompanied by "As Time Goes By". In 1998, it went fully animated, starting with a still shot of the Warner studio lot that does a pan to a 3D shield. It was revamped in 2021 starting with Locked Down, where we zoom past a photo-realistic rendition of the studio lot (with emphasis on the water tower), only for the new version of the shield (which is bannerless, blue and platinum, and simpler in design overall) to reveal itself.
  • The short-lived Warner Bros.-Seven Arts logo had two variants; an animated version that appeared over the film's opening scene, or a still version that was usually on a black background.
  • The Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Family logos have Bugs Bunny leaning on the logo (sometimes preceded by him coming out from behind it) and chewing a carrot. The usual fanfare is "Merrily We Roll Along", while through the '90s and early 2000s the animated TV series had the final bars of the Animaniacs theme ("Those are the facts!").
    • Teen Titans Go! To the Movies introduced a new secondary logo where Daffy Duck, in his wacky persona and design that would later appear in Looney Tunes Cartoons, runs and jumps around the logo going "WOO-HOO!" maniacally, until Porky pulls him into the shield. Amusingly, Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge used a variant where it's Scorpion who pulls Daffy into the shield instead, complete with a trademark "get over here!" Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms takes the previous variant one step further, by having Scorpion hop around like Daffy until Shaggy gets him with powers not unlike those portrayed in the "Ultra Instinct Shaggy" memes.
  • In the '70s and early '80s the Warner Brothers logo went from the "WB" shield to a stylized "W" following with a general trend within the industry at the time (this stylized "W" appeared by first fading in small in red on a black screen and zooming in, with "Warner Bros." fading in in white below it not long after, before having the same stylized "W" zooming in in white on a red screen, stopping in the middle, and having a black TV tube-like shape fading in behind it; the byline "A Warner Communications Company" appeared at the same time below, and after a few seconds, "Presents" appeared below that as well). It reverted back to the "WB" shield in 1984 though the logo lives on in the now unrelated music conglomerate Warner Music Group.
  • The Warner Bros. Television logo was generally static, with the exception of the 50th Anniversary variant. Had the anniversary banner not been flowing in a direction opposite to the one the shield was travelling in, the logo might not be static today.
  • 1985's ''Follow That Bird'' showed an animated Big Bird inflating a large "W", which rose to form an animated version of the WB shield. "Sesame Street is brought to you today by the letters 'W' and 'B'!"
  • After WB's absorption of New Line Cinema, New Line films starting with The Rite begin with a basic shot of the WB shield, whose golden parts then sepzrate and fly past the camera to a night skyline to assemble into the New Line Cinema logo, now in gold. The excess parts still fly past the New Line logo.
  • Warner Animation Group's logo consists of the usual Warner Bros. movie logo before flipping around to reveal its own logo on the other side, a shield with a white border with a red interior, almost similar to the logos seen before the Looney Tunes cartoons.
  • The Warner Home Video logo has three major variations. The first one simply had the W in the old Warner Communications logo zoom-out from the camera and settle below a bar that said Warner Home Video. In 1985, a second version with the Warner Bros. sky background appeared, and this one has the Warner Home Video bar slide in from the front of the screen (the camera zooms-out from just under the top of the bar and the letters under it) at which point it turns and faces the camera as the WB shield minus a belt follows it and lines up above it. A synth version of the classic Warner fanfare plays over the logo. This was replaced by another version that has the WB shield fade in from thin air, with the Warner Home Video marker now on the belt over the shield, and a piano number plays; the wording was changed to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in 2017.
• WGBH is a PBS affiliate in Boston, Massachusetts. They are the most prolific producer of PBS shows seen nationwide. They are arguably best known for their two logos, the second of which has not been replaced since 1978. They both use the same music, a wonder of synthesiser noodling, which quite a few people have also found scary. There's one variant of the logo that appears during PBS Kids shows produced by WGBH, a variant where several characters appear such as Arthur and Buster and Ruff Ruffman. It got changed to purple with the name GBH and a simpler reveal in 2020. However, the theme still remains.
• WNET: On a black screen, we see the New York skyline in a radar, with "From WNET New York" in the center. It appears on several PBS shows distributed by WNET, such as Cyberchase.
• Where's Lunch?: Best known for Everybody Loves Raymond, this production company's plate has a placemat with the words "Where's Lunch?" on it, being covered up by... well, lunch; a different meal each episode. The last episode presents the bill... "No charge! Thank you."
• Williams Street: Producer of much of [adult swim]'s original lineup.
  • Originally it was for "Ghost Planet Industries", way back when Space Ghost Coast to Coast and its spin-off, Cartoon Planet, were their only shows in production. Their plate is a blurry picture of the Williams Street studio, with a low tympani roll and a few ominous gongs. (The audio is actually ripped off of Mark VII Limited's plate from the 1960s above.) From 2001 to 2012, the plate was followed by a split-second (sometimes longer) flash of a skull and crossbones image (with the Cartoon Network logo for its teeth, which also looks like a censored bar, fittingly enough) on a white background, with a voice speaking or shouting, "Skull!"
  • The "Skull" card following the program Squidbillies customarily has the voice of a character from the series saying the word.
  • At the end of Robot Chicken commentaries, the commentators often wait and shout out "Skull!" along with the voice.
• David Letterman's Worldwide Pants logo is as simple as it gets—the company name (with a pair of khakis for the "A" in Pants) in space. However, it's mostly remembered for the random funny non-sequitur phrase that is said while the logo is shown.
• Wolf Films: Dick Wolf's production company for the Law & Order franchise. An illustration of a wolf howling at a full moon is shown, accompanied by the sound of the wolf howling and crickets chirping.
• World Sports Enterprises: Unusually for live sports events, NASCAR races broadcast on TNN and TBS closed with this Charlotte-based company's logo from 1994 to 2000.^*TBS broadcasts opened with it as well. WSE also produced CBS's NASCAR broadcasts, but the WSE logo was never shown there.
  
  Three arrowheads, one red, one yellow, and one green, would come up from the bottom of the screen, and stack up in the order that they would on a traffic light: red on top of yellow on top of green. They would then make a 90-degree turn to the right, and race off the screen in that direction, leaving behind streaks of their colors, and making the noise of a race car's engine gaining speed. They leave the screen completely, leaving behind thin white lines, in the middle of which sat a somewhat metallic, large white dot. The arrowheads would then come from varying directions, red from the top left corner, green from the top right corner, and yellow from the bottom. They would then form a triangle around the dot: yellow on top, green on the bottom left, and red on the bottom right. The words "WORLD SPORTS" would come up from the bottom of the screen and stop under the newly-formed shape. The word "Enterprises" would fade in under "WORLD SPORTS", while the lines the dot sat in the middle of would fade out. A nine-note tune would accompany this logo: three chimes for the arrowheads first appearing on-screen, then a brassy six-note fanfare when the logo formed.
  
  This logo was only altered once, for TNN's final NASCAR broadcast on November 5, 2000, with the word "GOODBYE" fading in under "Enterprises".^{More on that...}TNN lost NASCAR broadcasting rights from 2001 on, and Turner got a joint production deal with NBC that left WSE without a job; the company shut down a month later.
• WWE:
  • Front and back Vanity Plates. The Vanity Plate at the beginning of their programming is a 30-second montage of soundbites and blipverts of moments throughout their history. The Vanity Plate at the end is a simple light panning over the WWE logo. Both Vanity Plates were notably absent from ECW on Sci-Fi, a holdover from the early days of the Revival when WWE was trying to separate the new ECW from the other two "brands" as much as possible. WWE's front Vanity Plate has since been parodied in the form of Botchamania's opening sequence.
  • In July 2012, to coincide with the 1000th episode of WWE Raw, the company introduced new front & back vanity plates. The new opening signature is a short montage of photos of WWE wrestlers and arenas that appear in rapid succession before the WWE logo itself appears against a white background, with "Then. Now. Forever." fading in next to it. The Vanity Plate at the end is the word "ENTERTAINMENT" appearing against a black background, then changing to the WWE logo in a flash of light.
  • The company launched a new logo in August 2014. Despite that, their opening intro plate remains essentially the same, only switching out the old "scratch" logo with the new logo at the end. The old "ENTERTAINMENT" closing plate has now been replaced with a brand new one, depicting the new WWE logo being formed like building blocks against an "industrial" nighttime setting.
  • There have been other Vanity Plates WWE has used throughout history. From 1984 to 1988, the WWF block logo emerges in a starry background, with the words "WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION" appearing below, one by one, followed by an announcer's voice saying, "The recognized symbol of excellence in Sports Entertainment." It was reused on the Old School Raw, but with "FEDERATION" crossed out and "ENTERTAINMENT" written below it. From 1988 to 1991, the plate show moving imagery with an announcer's voice saying, "The World Wrestling Federation, what the world is watching." Signatures from 1991 to 1997 simply showed the WWF block logo with "WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION" below it and the announcer's voice said, "The World Wrestling Federation, for over 50 years, the revolutionary force in Sports Entertainment." Different WWF signatures were produced for the Attitude Era.

In anime series, the Vanity Plate appears before the beginning of the program, not after the end. There are frequently several of them, each from a different production company that collaborated in making the series. It is rare for the actual animation studio to display a Vanity Plate — unlike in North America, the animation studios are separate companies from the production companies that put series together. Instead, the studio will have its logo discreetly included in the ending credits. (Notable exceptions: Studio Ghibli, whose Vanity Plate features one of their best-known characters, Totoro, and Toei Animation, which usually involve their mascot Pero.)

UK Television

Until 1 January 1988, the UK's various ITV companies put vanity plates in front of their shows. These are referred to as "front caps", representing the companies that also broadcast the ITV network, and usually doubled as station ID's locally (known as "idents"). For a very brief period after the front caps were done away with, some companies used animated post-credits vanity plates (referred appropriately to as "end caps") until 1989. The UK in particular has a very strong cult affinity for their television network vanity plates and the continuity announcements that frequently accompany them.

• ABC: Its animated logo, introduced in 1958, features three triangles falling down and spelling out the company's initials, which then fold into a shield. The 1964 revision begins with the shield zooming in, followed by the same animation as before. Both versions are accompanied by a three-note jingle composed by Bob Sharples — the three notes are, wait for it, A, B and C.
• Anglia: A rotating statue of a silver knight on horseback carrying a flag with "Anglia" engraved on it, accompanied by a refrain from Handel's Water Music. An extra-long version appeared as the station sign-on every morning. After 29 years, it was replaced 1988 by an animated flag with an A made up of different coloured triangles which was briefly used an animated end vanity plate. This "A" was designed by Lambie-Nairn (who also designed the current logo of The BBC), and the original "flag" ident was used until 1999.
• ATV: With "front caps" known as "zooms", these mainly featured the station logo (two overlapping eyes, one being the "shadow" of the other, with the letters A, T and V in the holes) zooming into centre position on screen. As colour dawned for the station in 1969, the "Colour Zoom" sequence changed to a "colour chart" of red, green and blue circles morphing together and the yellow station logo appearing in a burst of colour along with a bombastic jingle.
• Border: For most of the "front cap" era, a still silent logo with two lines joining together as one inside the shape of a TV, an abstract representation of the broadcast region. Known in fan circles as "the chopsticks in a bowl" as it's indistinct what it represents without explanation.
• Central: Started off in 1982 as a sphere which split open with a ray of light to resolve as a white ball with the left part shadowed in a crescent shape. Replaced with a different "sphere" in 1983 with the crescent part of the sphere in the colours of the rainbow, sometimes referred to as "Moon". The well-loved amongst fans "Cake", an abstract version of "Sphere" with segments cut into the sphere, first appeared in promos and idents in the region in 1985, before replacing the sphere as an short-lived animated endcap, in proper vanity plate fashion in 1988.
• Channel: Started off in 1962 with their first ident, six hexagons appearing one by one on screen, one of with the mask of a leopard; it lasted a solid 20 years, changing from black and white to blue and yellow in 1976 when Channel became the last ITV region to get colour. From there, they gained a new more modern logo with the letters "CTV" made up of stripes, zooming in from centre. After that, they used a multitude of different logos but few with any staying power besides their "Channel Island globe" ident.
• Grampian: The first ident was an abstract depiction of a hilly landscape which then reformed into the station's St Andrew's flag logo, originally soundtracked with a short version of “Scotland the Brave”, all very patriotic. They later went for a sub-ATV morphing of components of the station logo when the station began colour broadcasts. They later used one of the first CGI frontcaps in the ITV network, with balls and diamonds tumbling around the screen before the station logo resolved.
• Granada: Famously silent and reflective of Oop North stoicness throughout the "front cap" era, the first logo featured a sometimes-animated northwards pointing arrow with the slogan "From the North" above the station name. After a brief flirtation with using just the word "Granada" underlined in the late 1960s, the station introduced its classic logo on the cusp of switching to colour in 1969 - the yellow G with a north-pointing arrow. For a long time barring a few 30th anniversary logos their logos were entirely silent affairs until they became slightly less dull with their "stripe" idents in the early 90s but hit their stride in the mid to late 90s with a big and bombastic ident placing their famous G (now apparently rendered as a large transparent perspex block) front and center, based off the stripe logo.
• HTV: The first infamous logo used monochrome cross-hatching effects to form the word "Harlech" which reportedly caused eyestrain among viewers though this only affected higher resolution screens, the more common lower resolution screens didn't exhibit the eyestraining moiré effect. Thankfully, the station's decision to abbreviate the name to HTV to appease non-Welsh viewers led to a less seizureriffic "front cap", where two white diagonal lines wiped on screen and morphed to form the new station logo, dubbed "the aerial" by front cap fans. Became a CGI-fest of tumbling logo components falling into place forming the logo in 1987.
• LWT: Beginning as the words "From London Weekend" zooming into view with a late-'60s Moog jingle, it soon evolved into the "From London Weekend" encased in a spinning circle, dubbed "the pound coin" by later generations. 1971 saw the launch of "the river", where a line made up of blue, white and orange/red stripes formed the joined-up letters "LW" on a black background; amended in 1978 for the letters to read "LWT" with the station name extended to "London Weekend Television". The station front-cap gave into the CGI era in 1986, as the stripes making up the "LWT" letters did a "folding out" effect to form the station logo. A very impressive (for its time) CGI ident was introduced in 1996, which showed three squares (one red, one white, one blue) break into a flurry of cubes, which flew down to a white smoke and formed the LWT logo (which has been amended so that the "L" is red, the "W" is white and the "T" is blue). Their final ident was introduced in 2000 (as a strike against network-mandated idents introduced the previous year), which zoomed over and up to a video wall with the "LWT" on it, along with ITV's "hearts" idents of the era surrounding it. Much of this wall was originally tinted red, and the music was mainly ambient beats with conspicuous beeps, reasonably nice but those in charge needed something more dynamic for a company as loud and proud as LWT with a reversion coming shortly after containing a lot more blue, a lot less red and a much more robust theme.
• Rediffusion: The company's logo, the "adastral", usually spun in its "front caps". During the "Associated-Rediffusion" era (1955-64), the jingle was a trombone-and-beeps rendition of "AR" in Morse code (.- .-.); in the "Rediffusion London" era (1964-68) it became a stately horn fanfare.
• Scottish: Early front caps featured the lion rampant - a tumbling effect was used for a while which was amended to a zooming effect when the Lord Lyon King of Arms complained. Colour saw the logo become the stylised letters "STV". 1985 saw the station update its logo to a stylised thistle (nicknamed "Bertie Bassett" due to its resemblance to the mascot of a confectionery company) made up of grey blocks, a blue ball and a purple "top".
• Southern: An eight-pointed star with a halo grows from the middle of the screen. While it initially had a more dramatic horn fanfare, the gentle acoustic guitar riff it used from the 1970s until the end in 1982 is the one mainly associated with the logo.
• Thames: Nearly the same front cap used from the station's beginning in 1968 until the end of the "front cap" era - a shot of London landmarks appearing from the middle of the screen with the word "THAMES" appearing on the front, all on a blue sky with light clouds backdrop. For well-remembered humorous takes on the logo, see Logo Joke. The background tune "Salute to Thames" is also very well known and also parodied.
• TSW: One of the quirkiest front caps when first seen in 1982, the full sequence saw a TV with a fuzzy signal with sprouting shoot become encased in a blue ball, which mutated into a set of six balls, which were actually green hills from another angle, which settled into place as a blue bar and the TSW letters folded out on screen. Best to look at it for yourself to see what we're talking about. Replaced by a much more boring CGI "front cap" in 1985 from which TSW continued to become more sedate.
• TVS: Using a rainbow-coloured version of the station logo, the "flower" or "shell" depending on which person from the region you talk to,^note it's actually a fleur-de-lys which either zoomed sedatedly (on weekdays) or span with more vigour (at weekends) to settle beside the letters "TVS". Changed in 1987 to station logos in chrome-effect CGI.
• Tyne Tees: Began as the letters "TTT" morphing from an anchor with a relevant sea-shanty style jingle and "Tyne Tees Television, Channel 8!" ID from early station announcer Adrian Cairns. The station logo changed to a yellow stacked block of letters reading "TTTV" which formed on screen first from various off-screen points, amended later to a computer-style zooming in.
• Ulster: Started out as a The Twilight Zone style mix of dots and lines accompanied by a refrain from "The Mountains of Mourne", a piece of traditional music. Come The Troubles, the modified logo with the oscilloscope pattern on the inside of a TV screen shape was usually transmitted still and in silence. Then in 1980, along came "the lollipop" or "the telly on a stick" - a statue with the station logo made from melted silver retrieved from volatile film stock which revolved to the sound of a plinky-plonk early 1980s synth tune. It was intended as an anniversary ident but stuck, still frontcaps though did exist on the few networked programmes it did make.
• Westward: Made use of the station's adopted symbol, a model of the Golden Hind, which later became a real-life statue which the camera panned away from.
• Yorkshire:
  • A golden chevron which appeared to a few bars from a local folk tune, "On Ilkley Moor B'ah Tat". Unanimated for most of the "front cap" era, 1987 saw the "Liquid Gold" front cap, with a 3D chevron emerging from a pool of, well, gold liquid.
  • Because of the abruptness of the "On Ilkley Moor B'ah Tat" theme, the Yorkshire Television logo is often considered to be UK's version of "The S from Hell".
  • The old version was animated for the show 3-2-1, with the chevron logo bringing an old dustbin to life(!)

ITV (and then Channel Four) also put plates at the end of the shows ("end caps"). Some archive reruns of ITV shows do not include the front caps, although they are often included in British DVD releases.

• Old shows replayed on TV and recent DVD releases get the ITV1, ITV2, etc. cap. Or else the bland anonymous ITV Studios cap rather than the ident of the original maker. It's really not the same.

Multiple Media

• Rovio Entertainment has used a dancing flame logo at the start of their game trailers and animated shorts since August 2013. The only update to it was in 2016 to feature the new corporate logo with the edges of the "R" symbol smoothed out and the text recolored red to match.

Video Games

Video games often use the "front caps" version, typically by having the plates for various companies involved in production play while the game is loading. Occasionally they're also around during the end credits, although the credits are more likely to use plain text rather than plates. Some notable examples include:

• The 3DO Company's logo with voice at the start of most of their games were memorable, especially to those playing the earlier Army Men titles.
• Activision had many forms of it over the years. Ranging from pieces of the black background breaking away with light forming the logo before cutting out like a CRT monitor, the stylized V spinning around before the rest of the letters joined together with it or with various Star Trek based games, the logo decloaking in space before the Enterprise-E, the U.S.S. Sovereign in the case of Star Trek: Bridge Commander or Voyager in the first Star Trek: Elite Force, strafes it with a couple of torpedoes.
• Pandemic's logo had no animation aside from a film grain and an intentionally grainy version of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fear" saying.
• Bungie had an early one that showed what looked like blue cells undergoing fission before zooming out to show a globe which is part of the i of the Bungie logo with a short rendition of Covenant Dance.
• Konami had a pretty memorable one complete with iconic "jingle" featured in the attract loop of all their arcade and 16-bit releases before they adopted the more sedate white-on-red banner logo they use today.
• Capcom's SNES-era plate had its logo fade in with a synth fade-in, then at the end the logo would flash to a single guitar chord. (This was mimicked in Mega Man 6, Capcom's last NES game). And the Resident Evil vanity plate.
  • An updated version of the 16-bit Capcom vanity plate was used in DuckTales Remastered.
• Apogee Software had two commonly-used vanity plates: One featuring a starry background with a starburst at the bottom of the screen (as appears before Secret Agent, Crystal Caves, and Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure), and the more iconic orbital view of a planet with their company fanfare playing in the background (as appears before Duke Nukem II, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, and Wacky Wheels).
• Monolith Soft shows their vanity plate at the end of the credits of their games, which takes the form of a monolith rising out of an ocean on a horizon with the letters of the logo moving into place with a glare of sunlight.
• Clover Studios had a very ordinary vanity plate, a green 4-leaf clover blooming accompanied by a female voice saying, "Clover..." But in Ōkami, one of the standard 'clean up the trashed world' activities you have to do in the game is first dig up black clovers, then bloom them into healthy green ones.
• PlatinumGames, a company who is composed of several members who used to work at Clover Studios before it went belly-up, has a very beautiful logo animation. It shows several colorful sparkles inside the logo (all of the sparkles are the same sparkle used on the logo itself) as the camera jumps to various areas of the logo, then it zooms out and the entire logo turns a shiny black. All of this is accompanied by beautiful music. Unfortunately, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance merely uses a static version of the logo, while The Wonderful 101, being published by Nintendo, does not show any logos upon starting up as per Nintendo protocols (Nintendo tends to abstain from showing logos on start-up of their own games ever since the Wii's release).
• Rockstar Games has done a unique one-off vanity plate for almost every game they've ever made.
• Sega had a different version in nearly every Sega Genesis game. Of particular note are the Sega vanity plates from the main Sega Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog games. Originally, Sonic 1 was to have a sound test screen featuring an anthropomorphic band and detailed animations; when this was scrapped, the developers decided to fill up the remaining space in the ROM by digitizing the two-note "Se-ga!" jingle from the contemporary Japanese commercials and adding it to the vanity plate. They managed to get the sound to a reasonable quality and threw it in there, and every other main-series Genesis Sonic game had the same jingle in it. It was also present in an earlier version of Sonic 3D Blast/Flickies' Island, but was replaced by the US commercials' "SEGA!" scream in the final product.
  
  Sonic Mega Collection uses the old plate again as a reference. Likewise, so do trailers for the 20th anniversary crossover game Sonic Generations in regards to its history-spanning nature... but the game itself uses the "*whoosh* Sega." plate that is standard for nearly all Sega games as of the late 2000's. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, a love letter to Sega as a whole, uses both the new and old Sega plates together on start-up (to make things less awkward, they are separated by the Sumo Digital plate and the copyright disclaimer screen).
  
  In 2017, it has been announced as a part of their new branding project, Amazing SEGA, a new intro were introduced, which consists of an eye opening with the SEGA logo swooshing on the reflection of the eye.
  • There also exist logos for films co-produced by Sega. The first one is an uncharacteristically dark and tense logo with the Sega logo glitching on a black background with tense sounds, that was used for the Neon Genesis Evangelion movies Evangelion: Death (True)² and The End of Evangelion as well as Adolescence of Utena, so this logo actually fits the Evangelion films' Darker and Edgier tone, not so much Utena. A second one slightly similar to the Evangelion/Utena version with the Sega logo appearing out of a Sonic ring and blue electrical effects around the logo was only used for the now-infamous first trailer of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) featuring the original design of Movie Sonic. A third logo starting with footage from Sonic the Hedgehog, before zooming out to reveal more footage from various Sega games (as well as other vanity plates for their older consoles) and then transitioning into a mosaic of the Sega logo while a choir chants "SEGA!", was made for the final release of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), and would later be reused for its sequel as well as a sped-up version for Sonic Prime, where the sound is instead the 1-Up jingle from Sonic '06 and a ring sound.
• In Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the '80s, Activision and Harmonix replaced their typical logo plates with pixelated ones like what one might expect to see in an '80s video game. Activision kept this retro logo in Guitar Hero On Tour Decades for DS. RedOctane uses their regular logo, but since it consists primarily of a pixelated fireball to begin with, it still fits the sequence.
• Valve themselves plays ominous guitar music (Which is "Hazardous Environments" in the soundtracks to the first two Half-Life games) over a still frame of a man's head with the rotary handle of a garden spigot grafted onto it. For the first two Half-Life games, there's a white guy with the valve replacing his eye; games from the Orange Box onwards have a bald black guy with the valve sticking out the back of his head. From DOTA2 onwards, the head now turns and looks sideways, as the music uses the more intense percussion from the same song.
• Homestar Runner:
  • Fake-video game corporation Videlectrix has its surreal one of a man falling over and giving an "I'm OK!" gesture synced to a simple melody, displayed in the style of the console/computer the presented game is a pastiche of.
  • The fake dev blog for Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People featured a post where Strong Bad claims that the more unskippable company logos the player is forced to watch before the game starts, the better the game will be.
    Strong Bad: I've gotten Telltale to agree to 23 logos so far, but they keep trying to talk me down. I may have to just move on and focus my efforts on the unrelated Videlectrix project: LogoQuest - Legend of the Lost Interest-Before-The- Game-Even-Starts!
• LucasArts usually put their logo in the front and back. Once they got bored with the basic logo, they began doing all sorts of stuff to it, like scaring it away with a tentacle, parachuting it in, blowing it up, etcetera.
• Many flash games have vanity plates nowadays; some of the most recognizable include the Miniclip "BOOM!" logo and the Armor Games "Dueling Swords" logo.
• "EA Games. <whispers> Challenge everything."; "E.A. Sports. It's in the game" (which is actually older and still in use, unlike the other one).
  • In the mid-2000s (around the start of the seventh console generation) EA started using unique variants of the main logo based on the theme of every game under the main label (later including its EA Sports and EA Originals titles in this as well). The company revived use of its longform name, Electronic Arts, for many of its modern releases starting in 2020, after 17 years of almost exclusively referring to itself by its initials.
• nVidia has had a few vanity plates over the years, typically showcasing the company logo and their motto of "The way it's meant to be played". There was at least one such vanity plate that was unique to the game that showed it (Unreal Tournament 2004 in this case).
• AMD later followed suit in 2018, with vanity plates showcasing the Ryzen and Radeon product lines.
• On the IGS Poly Game Master 1 games, it played a short animation on startup with text that says "POLYGAME MASTER" typing in and the IGS logo spinning in from the bottom.
  • Poly Game Master 2 games don't have the animated logo (rather, a still Poly Game Master 2 logo with music is used), but they do have an animated IGS logo. It shows a ball zooming towards the screen, which explodes into the IGS logo. An ® symbol appears from the top and bounces to the bottom-right of the logo.
• Wolf Team had several vanity plates over the years:
  • Almost all its computer games showed "Wolf Team" scrolling up over a detailed background image, followed by "Since 1987" appearing in smaller letters underneath. (Pre-1987 games had instead "Telenet" followed by "A Wolf Team Presents.") The background images varied from game to game at first (e.g. a Fantasm Jewel in Valis), but most later games had three crossed swords zoom in, with a shield and banner fading in behind them. The musical theme in all cases was two falling chimes played twice.
  • On the Sega Genesis, Wolf Team switched to showing a much simpler trademark logo. The old musical theme was abandoned, though at first the "Wolf Team" text still scrolled up as before. Starting in 1991, both the logo and "Wolf Team" text were angularly stylized in red and black over a white background. On the Sega CD, this gradually evolved into a more elaborate sequence, with a voice (rumored to be George Takei's) saying, "Game Creative Staff: Wolf Team."
• Ocean Software, for most of its history, did nothing fancy with its corporate logo. However, an animated vanity plate used in their PlayStation releases showed the Ocean logo underwater with a dolphin swimming across in front of it, turning in the middle to mug for the camera.
• Raizing's arcade game Attract Modes have the Raizing logo appear while a voice shouts "RAIZING!" with a distinct echo.
• "Presented by: CAVE!" This was only used on Cave 68000-based games, however; most subsequent games still display the CAVE logo during the Attract Mode but without anyone saying the line.
  • On DonPachi only, a completely different Cave logo was used.

Web Video

• There are many YouTube channels and videos which show the history of vanity plates for various companies, such as TR3X Productions. The plates are shown in chronological order, thus making the videos Progressive Era Montages.
• Channel Awesome:
  • Very early episodes from back when the website was "That Guy with the Glasses" ended with a card simply reading "The End by That Guy with the Glasses," which was eventually replaced with a more formal credit sequence.
  • After the rename to Channel Awesome, it got a new logo - a satellite inside of a white circle - and a new vanity plate appearing at the end (and for some longer episodes and movies, the beginning) of The Nostalgia Critic. The satellite fades in from space, becomes engrossed in the light of a star behind it, and forms the logo. The logo was later tweaked so the circle was red instead.
• Cinemassacre:
  • Their first logo for The Angry Video Game Nerd simply displayed the logo on a black screen while a random piece of music (most often a guitar riff) played quietly in the background.
  • Their most recent one has the logo on a red 3D checkerboard background.
• Circumference Films uses a brief vanity card before every Economy Watch and Circumference Films production.

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