Fhyujk

In the 2018 movie Vice, an "early credits roll" was used for comedic effect about halfway through the film. It was used in conjunction with text overlays with a sarcastic tone to them.

I found this to be very funny, because I have never seen this before and did not expect it. Has this technique where the end credits were shown early for comedic (or other) effect been used before?

For clarification: The credits should roll during the film, not at the beginning. After the early credits, the film should have a substantial running time left, i.e. after-credits bonus scenes do not count.

Monty Python's Flying Circus did this. According to TV Tropes:

Credits Gag: In addition to many Creative Closing Credits, the placement of the credits in the show's sequence was a gag in itself.

• Of particular note is the episode "The Golden Age of Ballooning", where the closing credits ran about halfway through the show.


• The next episode, "Michael Ellis", went one step further. The end credits ran immediately after the Title Sequence. That is, less than 30 seconds into the show.


• The episode that started with the "Summarize Proust Competition" sketch rolled the credits right after that sketch.


• Conversely there are episodes in which the opening credits aren't run until more than halfway through.


• After the credits roll in the How Not to be Seen episode a BBC announcer states that the episode would be replayed for those that missed it. After the entire episode is indeed replayed in a highly compressed format, the credits are allowed to roll for a second time.

I believe the notorious film Irréversible does this as part of its "reverse chronology" gimmick. The credits roll right at the very beginning, reversed so they scroll from top-to-bottom instead of bottom-to-top.

Even though it doesn't count, as it's not a movie or TV show, I feel obliged to mention Donkey Kong Country. You defeat King K. Rool, a fake set of credits roll, and then he gets back up and you have to defeat him all over again, at which point the real credits roll.

The 30 Rock series finale was longer than most episodes and had the start of a early credit roll (just the "Lorne Michaels" part) before Liz quickly brought the show back to finish up the finale.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion was created as an alternative version of the two last episodes of the TV series, so they put the credits at the middle to presumably emphasize this fact. According to Wikipedia, the episodic version of the film includes two endings, one for each episode, and even a next-episode-preview section in the first one.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth and Top wo Nerae! & Top wo Nerae 2! Gattai Movie!!, both made by Gainax, did something similar, but instead of credits there's a musical intermission.

This should still qualify - there was a Seinfeld episode which was filmed in reverse order so the ending credits actually appeared in the first scene. This doesn't violate what you wrote when you said "The credits should roll during the film, not at the beginning." because this was technically the END of the episode.

The French film Mais qui a tué Pamela Rose ? (2003) does this too. The credits roll for no particular reason, and the film restart few seconds later, like nothing happened.