How many VeggieTales Tales did the characters actually experience?

In the first story, Lisa Junior Asparagus watches Tales From the Crisper and gets nightmares of the dark. Bob and Larry crash into his bedroom and tell him why he should not be afraid of anything when God is bigger than anything he can fear on TV, and Phil Winklestein (the actor playing Frankencelery) apologizes for scaring Junior.

Junior is made fun of by a family of grapes because of his appearance (they think he is a cheese-headed bean boy). His dad tells the grapes to be sorry, and Junior forgives the grapes. But when Rosie and Tom make fun of Junior again because of his name and an accident with a hoe, Junior has difficulty forgiving them again. When Pa gets his kids to apologize for hurting Junior again, Junior forgives them again. Bob, Larry and Junior watch a silly commercial for a Forgive-O-Matic and Junior comes in to where the commercial is being filmed to tell Scallion #1 why we do not need Forgive-O-Matics. Bob reminds Larry of a time when they went on a Gilligan's Island-type three-hour tour with Dad Asparagus (as in Junior's dad), Archibald Asparagus and Lovey Asparagus, and they learned a lot more about forgiveness after Larry crashed them into a rock because he imagined it being an iceberg, and there were whales on the other side in his daydream.

In the second story, Bob and Larry come into Junior's house again for his help on a space mission to save their Star Trek-type spaceship, the U.S.S. Apple Pies, from a popcorn meteor. Junior sees the good in Jimmy and Jerry, and learns that even though they may be weirdoes who only eat and sing Tootsie-Wootsie, they are good friends who can save them by eating the whole popcorn meteor in 2 minutes. After they eat the whole meteor, they come back in the Apple Pies and sing I Can Be Your Friend. There is another episode with the USS Applepies and more characters on it almost 2 decades later, The Fennel Frontier, but it is hard to consider it a sequel because any references to this one are vague and there is an entirely different Bob, Junior and Larry in this story.

I didn't think I would include this one, but since some of this show's characters (Laura, Mr. Lunt, George) become recurring characters who show up later in The Toy That Saved Christmas and Mr. Lunt references this exact story, I will have to. I guess this really did happen to Bob, Junior and Larry if you can imagine them getting a name change to not be identified by others there from the previous three Tales. Bob is Rack, Junior is Shack, and Larry is Benny. Their new job at the chocolate factory is where they meet Laura, George, Mr. Lunt and Mr. Nezzer, all of whom would go to star in later films of theirs and appear in some of their further adventures.

Junior's soon-to-be new friend, Laura, has come back from a delivery of chocolate bunnies. When Mr. Nezzer announces that "Nezzer chocolate bunny factories just shipped its 2,000,000th chocolate bunny." he allows them all to eat as many chocolate bunnies as they want for the next 30 minutes. Most of the workers get sick, but Junior remembers what his mom told him when he was a baby, and he gets Bob and Larry to stop eating bunnies with them so they do not get sick. Mr. Nezzer is proud of them for being the last three standing, and promotes them to "junior" executives (no pun intended). He sings the bunny song to demonstrate what they will do when they worship is 90-foot bunny statue, but they resist singing, and instead they sing Junior's song about thinking of their parents every day. Mr. Nezzer sends them to the furnace, but Laura's delivery truck rescues them just in time! She escapes from the guards chasing her, but Mr. Lunt captures her before she can escape. Bob, Junior and Larry fall into the furnace, but God sends an angel to save them, and they come out alive. Mr. Nezzer sees the error of his ways, executing them for not worshipping his giant chocolate bunny. Bob, Junior and Larry forgive him and the whole factory dances to their song about standing up for what they believe in.

George tells his granddaughter Annie about Dinkletown, a place where he used to deliver mail that did not understand the true meaning of Christmas. Buzz-Saw-Louie didn't like the negative messages his nose was teaching the kids, so he set out to find the true meaning of Christmas. When Bob, Junior and Larry ran into him, they took him to visit George, and they sneak past the penguins to Wally P. Nezzer's TV studio to share the true meaning of Christmas with everybody.

One thing that always confused me about this toy story (yes reference to the Pixar movie intended) was that Mr. Lunt mentions Wally P. Nezzer's brother, Nebby K. Nezzer, the one with the chocolate factory that he used to work for, which means that The Toy That Saved Christmas canonically features the same Laura, George and Mr. Lunt from Rack, Shack and Benny, but now there are two Bobs, two Juniors, two Larrys, and two Mr. Nezzers.

Larry doesn't know until Bob tells him at the end that this is the first VeggieTales sing-along tape. Larry tries different things on the countertop; he makes a workout video, a home improvement video where he tries to fix the faucet with Jimmy, and a real estate success video. After Bob finally tells Larry that this is a sing-along video, Larry reveals he bought a whole chocolate factory with no money down, and we see a new silly song where Larry, Mr. Lunt and Pa Grape are The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.

Larry first adopted the superhero identity of LarryBoy in Dave and the Giant Pickle. He thought there was nothing special about "Plain Old Larry" even with all the Silly Songs he has made, and he thought he could be a bigger guy if he was a superhero, much like how Saul tried to make David "bigger" by having David wear his armor. Saul is Archibald and David is Junior.

In the Countertop Intro of The Fib From Outer Space, Bob asks Larry if they have any stories that can tell Edzio Vieri what to do when his friends want him to lie about not doing something terrible. Larry said "Bob, I'm all over it. The same thing happened to Junior Asparagus once." but Bob doesn't remember since he was not in any of these LarryBoy stories before The League of Incredible Vegetables. Jimmy and Jerry, at the Bumblyburg Science Lab, see a space alien falling from the sky and need to alert LarryBoy to go out and find it. LarryBoy's butler is Archibald, whose name here is shortened to Alfred. The fib lands near Junior's house and hides. Junior wants to get his dad's special Art Bigotti bowling plate for Mr. Snuggly at his tea party with Laura, but when he jumps on a shelf to get it, the plate falls off the top and breaks. Fibrilious Minimus, the space alien, encourages Junior to make up a story about how somebody else broke the plate. Junior is terrified of the prospect of lying, but Fibrilious says "What we are talking about here, is just a little fib. People do it all the time, trust me. A little fib couldn't hurt anybody!" So Junior lies about Laura breaking the plate. Unfortunately, Fib lied even then about a little fib not hurting anybody.

Percy is mad when Laura got in trouble for Junior breaking the plate, so Junior lied about Lenny breaking the plate. Laura and Lenny get mad at Junior for lying about them, so Junior tells a third lie about the aliens from Invasion of the Cow Snatchers breaking the plate. Every time Junior lies, Fib grows more and more until he is the size of King Kong. He wrecks Bumblyburg and carries Junior up to the Bumblyburg water tower. LarryBoy tries to rescue Junior from the giant Fib, but gets captured and has one of his plunger ears squeezed off. Fib nearly eats LarryBoy until Alfred announces that Junior can stop the lie. Junior finally tells his parents the truth that he broke the plate. The Fib spits out LarryBoy and the truths shrink Fib until he disappears. LarryBoy's remaining plunger ear lowers Junior down from the water tower. Junior's parents forgive him for breaking the plate and lying, since all the danger and trauma he went through with the monstrous Fib was enough punishment. Junior's dad understands it was an accident, and Junior is much more important to him than any old bowling plate. He just wishes Junior told him the truth right away. From now on, Junior should give the true story the first time. After watching that story, Bob says "You did a great job, Larry...Boy." It is worth noting that while we have seen Laura and Junior in some scenes together before in Rack, Shack and Benny and The Toy That Saved Christmas, this is the first time they are seen together as close friends.

Larry is tired out after The Fib From Outer Space, so Junior hosts in his place. Bob and Junior use the power of imagination to get into the land of Israel, where Larry plays Josh. Junior and Bob can witness this story they imagine up, and most characters who are not Moses (Mr. Nezzer) and Joshua (Larry) are still the same, Jerry and Jimmy address each other with their real names, but Bob and Junior are only imagining the fruits and veggies they know as the Israelites. For the most part, they do not do anything but watch their imaginary story play out, but after Jimmy makes a Wallminator 3000, a rocket that can destroy Jericho's Great Wall, Junior reminds them "God gave you directions, and you're ignoring them! I know God's directions don't always make sense to us, but things work out a lot better when we do things God's way instead of our own way." After Junior sang for how God's way is the best way, he encourages the Israelites to go back to Jericho and hop around the wall for 7 days.

The French Peas, Phillipe and Jean-Claude, show Bob and Larry a Madame Bovary-type story from France where they are Madam Blueberry's butlers in her treehouse. She is a very blue berry because she doesn't have all the things she wants that could make her happy. So they go down to the Stuff-Mart to get all that stuff after the three Salesmen get her interested, and on the way they see Annie and her parents sing about thankfulness. A thankful heart is a happy heart. Madam Blueberry buys a lot of things at the Stuff-Mart, until she sees Junior and his dad playing with a ball. Junior is happy with getting the ball, instead of the much-more-expensive toy train. Madam Blueberry wants a happy heart like Annie and Junior both have, because that will help her be more thankful.

Larry is sulking at Jimmy's ice cream parlor, now that Archibald has cancelled Silly Songs in Madam Blueberry because of the disastrous performance in his silly song from Josh and the Big Wall. "It wasn't my fault! They got a mix-up in PhotoHut." Jimmy tried to cheer Larry up by playing the songs Promised Land, Good Morning George, and The Thankfulness Song, which makes Larry thankful for the time he had performing Silly Songs before Madam Blueberry. Archibald comes in and says "It was my fault. All my fault! I'm the one to blame." Jimmy says "That's despicable. I'd feel that way too if somebody took my songs away!" Archibald thought he was acting in the public's best interest, until he got a petition from 167,512 adoring fans to ask him to forgive and forget the Song of the Cebu incident and return Silly Songs to regular veggie programming. Archibald reinstates silly songs, but advises Larry to not be too silly (see Lyle the Kindly Viking to know what he meant by too silly). Larry is happy to have his Silly Songs back, and plays his new Silly Song, The Yodeling Veterinarian of the Alps.

LarryBoy stops Scallion #3 from stealing Percy's milk money, and shakes him down so Percy gets his milk money back. However, LarryBoy then inadvertently starts the Rumor Weed craze when he jumps and knocks a weed off of a roof, which falls onto a telephone wire and gets electrified to life. The rumor begins after Alfred tells a story about him saving a dinner party at Veggie Valley Elementary School. He needs to go home and "recharge his batteries." Laura thinks there is something awfully weird about Alfred saying he has to recharge his batteries. Junior starts to believe Alfred is a robot since he has a toy robot with rechargeable batteries. A rumor weed pops up next to them, and claims that they can tell her anything because she isn't going anywhere. Unfortunately, the Weed lied because now there are more of her in Bumblyburg spreading rumors to Percy, Percy's Dad, Laura's Dad, Wally P. Nezzer, and Scooter. There is also a weed in Alfred and Larry's garden, but Larry leaves before she can tell him anything. After receiving a call from Madam Blueberry, the mayor, Larry needs to become LarryBoy and find out where the weeds are coming from.

It turns out that these strange weeds do not photosynthesize. They need lots of energy to grow, but they do not get it from sunlight. Alfred modifies the Larry-Mobile to dig underground and find the mother weed. Unfortunately, when LarryBoy gets down there, he can not communicate with Alfred. Alfred goes out on his motorcycle to warn the citizens of Bumblyburg about LarryBoy's peril. However, nobody will help Alfred because they all believe he is a robot. Officer Scooter and Mayor Blueberry think Alfred's motorcycle helmet is part of his shiny metal robot head. Alfred says "Oh, no. That's my helmet. It keeps my brain safe!" and Scooter says "Your robot brain!" The huge mother rumor weed is too big and strong for LarryBoy to stop, and she breaks out of the ground to steal Alfred. The townspeople think it serves Alfred right to be taken by the huge weed, until Junior's dad explains to him and Laura that Alfred needing to "recharge his batteries" was just a figure of speech that meant he was tired and needed to rest. Junior and Laura spread nice words and everyone who thought Alfred was a robot remember nice things he did for them that an evil robot would not do. These make flowers grow on the weed and it sets Alfred free with the rumor now dead. LarryBoy makes it back up through the manhole in the ground and asks if there was a flower show. Since there was no countertop intro in The Rumor Weed, the episode ends with LarryBoy and Alfred giving us the traditional closing Bible verse from the Larry-Cave.

Larry, Mr. Lunt and Pa Grape, the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, get together and do something: They host the ultimate silly song countdown! Larry and Mr. Lunt put all of the bags of votes in The Astonishing Contraption of Silliness for the Top 10 silliest silly songs (out of a possible 12, Oh Santa and Lost Puppies were the only songs that didn't make it).

At #7, a bunch of the entries get jumbled to make The Dance of the Yodeling Cebu Lips. Pa Grape recalibrated the machine, and it got to the right title: The Water Buffalo Song. The Pirates pause for a moment of respect, as it is the grandfather of all silly songs that started the whole thing. At #4, the machine gets mixed up again to make The Song of the Water Buffalo Who Don't Love Cebu With Yodeling Lips. While Pa Grape fixes the Astonishing Contraption Again, Larry and Mr. Lunt make another Silly Song out of their Chinese take-out menu. Pa Grape says "Nice try, but I don't think it'll make the countdown." The real #4 entry is Mr. Lunt's Silly Song from when Alfred cancelled Larry's songs: His Cheeseburger.

When the Astonishing Contraption gets to #2, Pa Grape shouts "Hold it! Stop the countdown! Maybe we didn't collect all the votes. Did you remember to check the closet? Maybe there's more votes in the closet." Pa Grape throws his hidden bag of votes from the closet in the Astonishing Contraption so The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything will be #1. Mr. Lunt and Larry stop the contraption, and Pa confesses. "I rigged the election! That last bag of votes weren't official votes at all. They were all phony votes for our song." Pa Grape did it because he was sad about his only Silly Song being #2, because Mr. Lunt has his cheeseburger song and Larry has the other 8 Silly Songs. Mr. Lunt says "Well, #2 is nothing to sneeze at. It sure beats the Forgive-O-Matic." Pa Grape feels better about having the 2nd best song, and Larry, Mr. Lunt and the Astonishing Contraption of Silliness forgive him as long as he doesn't cheat with his own votes again. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything is the #2 Silly Song, and the #1 Silliest Silly Song of all time is...The Hairbrush Song. After the countdown, Larry offers us a Kung Pao Squid.

Larry decides to not do the theme song this time because the future has no theme songs. Theme songs are predictable, and the future is about the unpredictable. Larry believes that the future is Automatic Entertainment (Auto-tainment). Bob and Larry enter a big white room that Larry claims to be the future, and he says "the future's been white since the 70s." If Larry was talking about the 1970s, and he, Bob and Mr. Lunt did not literally travel forward in time, then I always assumed that he just renovated a former disco parlor to give it a white, clean "futuristic" look.

Robots Ventril-O-Matic and Rusty are the host of the future, and they tell randomly generated jokes. The punchlines do not make sense, but the unexpected punchline is what makes it funny. Mr. Lunt is the Techno-Gourd of the future, and he operates the Wheel of Veggies and the Swarming Balls of Disorder to randomly select a performer and the topic and the song that they perform. The French Peas perform a song about Nautical Refuse, and Pa Grape performs a song about Biblical Dwarves. Rusty says he has a lot in common with Zacchaeus, and teases Ventril-O-Matic after Ventriloquist's makes a joke about Rusty's height when he says maybe Zacchaeus and Rusty originated from the same parts facility. Afterward, Ventril-O-Matic plays a random short film on a random topic, Lunch! "The greedy impale themselves on many heartaches..."

After Lunch, Mr. Lunt picks Alfred to perform a song about Military Intelligence. Rusty and Ventril-O-Matic get into an argument after Rusty tells a joke about an asparagus who confused Porsches with porches, and dishonestly earned 50 dollars by painting the car instead, because it would have taken him twice as long to paint the porch. Against Mr. Lunt's request, Larry goes in to perform an emergency song to cheer up the two robots and stop their argument about Rusty's cheat joke. Junior joins in on Larry's song. This gets Rusty to warm up to Ventril-O-Matic, but he acts too lovey-dovey after Ventril-O-Matic shows Rusty another animated short called Binky the Opera Singer. Larry realizes he cheered up the robots too much, because Rusty is experiencing randomly generated emotions. Techno-Gourd Mr. Lunt selects Pa Grape again to sing a Big Band song about a Big Donkey. After Pa Grape's second song, Rusty starts crying and hitting Ventril-O-Matic.

Bob calls off the future because he does not think children's entertainment will work with randomly generated jokes and randomly generated emotions. Larry was sure that having everyone perform Silly Songs for the whole show instead of telling a long story would be the great new way to entertain kids and teach nice lessons. Bob admits they had some good songs, but asks what lesson there is to learn from all that went wrong with the robots hosting. Larry knows what they learned, and whispers to Junior to sing about it. Mr. Lunt picks Junior for one last song (no topic or genre this time), and Junior's Bedtime Song shows Bob and Larry that God loves them, no matter how bad or good their day was. Bob and Larry say goodbye to the robots and leave their "future" program. Mr. Lunt, the Techno-Gourd follows after them, saying "Hey, wait for me! Can I get my old job back in the present? These robots are freakin' me out!" The door to the future closes behind them and the credits roll.

(segment: Bully Trouble)

The Rumor Weed did not have the regular VeggieTales theme song or countertop because some parents who watched The Fib From Outer Space wrote terrified letters because it was too scary for their kids, so that is why that did not have the ordinary VeggieTales branding on it. The Bad Apple tones down that scariness a lot (it doesn't have somebody held hostage by a growing monster in the climax) and is the next LarryBoy episode to have a Countertop Intro. Much like Dave and the Giant Pickle, Larry wears his LarryBoy outfit on the countertop the whole time. He also brings Archibald in his "Alfred" butler clothes to the countertop with him to read Libby's text message.

One day in Bumblyburg, Junior buys a chocolate bar to share with Annie, which is snatched up by Scallion #3. After Madame Blueberry, The Rumor Weed re-introduces Madame Blueberry as the mayor of Bumblyburg, and The Bad Apple shows Petunia to be a news reporter in Bumblyburg. Her first appearance was in Duke and the Great Pie War. LarryBoy gets the Choco D'Lux back from the scallion, gives it back to Junior and Annie, and says "With great chocolate comes great responsibility." When LarryBoy drives back home with some chocolate of his own, a shifty worm named Curly shoots a beeping camera dot at the LarryMobile.

It is April 2, 2007, the 300th anniversary of Bumblyburg. The statue of Obidiah Bumbly is covered in webs, but Madame Blueberry will not let a few cobwebs get in zee way of Bumblyburg's 300th birthday. Curly and The Bad Apple know they can take over Bumblyburg if they make everybody fall into temptation like her great uncle Ephraim Apply has done. They need to trap Bumblyburg's three key elements in a web of temptation first: Madame Blueberry with vanity, Petunia with video games, and LarryBoy with chocolate. After Alfred goes to the Bumblyburg historical society to learn about Ephraim Apply and the webs, he is terrified to see LarryBoy stuck in a web of chocolate temptation. The Bad Apple also gets Alfred stuck in temptation by making him watch Top Banana and tying him with webs in his chair. The Top Banana Hour is interrupted by a news broadcast from Curly about Apply's Fun House 2. He tells LarryBoy "You can't be the superhero God wants you to be if all you ever think about is chocolate!" and LarryBoy gets Alfred out of his Bad AppleTM web by making a bottle of Umph! Sports Drink melt the web. Alfred pulls LarryBoy out of the chocolate swimming pool with the rope of his super-suction ears. They go free Madame Blueberry and Petunia Rhubarb from their web portals and warn everybody about the trap that Apply's Fun House is. LarryBoy, Madame Blueberry, Officer Scooter, three firemen, and the Department of Merriment cut the webs holding down Apply's Fun House 2 and the Bad Apple gets tied in the webs. She tries to make her fun house crush the Obidiah Bumbly statue. LarryBoy shoots his super-suction ears at two buildings on opposite ends of the town square and slingshots Apply's Fun House 2 out of Bumblyburg. Bumblyburg celebrates the 300th anniversary with a 300-pound chocolate cake. Larry is terrified of it because of his chocolate temptation, but Alfred agrees to save him a small piece. Back at the countertop, Larry and Alfred talk about what they learned with Libby Forcucci. Bob tries to make himself a superhero: Red Wonder/Bobbin. His theme song is interrupted by Lisa Vischer's What Have We Learned song. There's nothing wrong with playing a video games once in a while, but when they keep you from being the kid God wants you to be, that is when it becomes a problem. LarryBoy shows Bob how a theme song is really done, and we see a Shux music video before the end credits.

(segment: Abe and the Amazing Promise)