How The Muppets Revolutionized Movie Credits

Did you know that Jim Henson and the Muppets helped revolutionize movie credits?

We sort of take bonus scenes during the credits of a movie, or even entire post-credit sequences for granted nowadays, but things weren’t always so. Although one of the first examples of an end credits scene was probably the original Ocean’s 11, it was really The Muppet Movie that kicked the trend in to high gear:

That classic sequence was a big hit with audiences that pretty soon it seemed like almost everyone else was doing it too (imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, of course!). During the `80s credit or post-credit scenes were featured in movies like Airplane! , Masters of the Universe, Back to the Future, Young Sherlock Holmes, and a slew of others.

Not to be outdone, the Muppets came up with another great credit sequence at the end of 1981’s The Great Muppet Caper:

Creative credits must have been deep in the Muppets’ DNA by the mid `80s, because the Count makes a memorable appearance at the end of Follow That Bird:

Today we take these kinds of sequences for granted. Probably the most famous one of all is the post-credit “button scene” in Iron Man, which inaugurated the tradition of post-credit scenes that have since become a hallmark of movies based on Marvel comics and comic book movies in general:

So, yes, it’s true. We owe a lot of the popularity of post-credit scenes to Jim Henson.

Via Vulture.