Affectionate Parody

"Not true, the sixth Element is mine, and that's faithfulness to the source material! The best parodies are the ones that positively build on the original work, rather then rely on repetitive cursing and pop culture jokes. There's a reason the original series caught people's attention in the first place, and paying tribute to that isn't a cop-out, its comedy!"

—Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural, "The Elements of Parody"

"With MSPA I am always on the lookout for raw material to manipulate in esoteric ways, and it's usually garnered through satire. But then I ride that material pretty hard, and before you even know what's going on, it's not satirical anymore! Ask yourself this: at what point did John's love of Con Air cease to be a mockery of the film, and became more of a SHRINE to it? Hard to say."

—Andrew Hussie

Some parodies take things apart to show how terrible the thing is and why it shouldn't have been done in the first place. Other parodies take things apart to show how awesome the thing is, why they liked it, and how to put it back together again better than new. The latter is known as an Affectionate Parody.

Affectionate Parodies are generally done by fans of the source material. Don't presume, however, that because of this, the Affectionate Parody can't be harsh; ultimately, it can be even more cutting than usual, because as devotees of the thing parodied, the creators know exactly where its faults, flaws, and weak points are. Unfortunately, if the jokes are mean-spirited enough about their subjects in general, fans might mistake the creators for hating the subjects and, well, it can lead to Misaimed Fandom.

They often function as both a send-up of a genre and an honest member of it. Generally, there's some kind of underlying plot, a twisted version of a stock tale, and actual characters, even if they're swathed in cliches like a mummy in wrappings. Some of them can lean more toward the "Affectionate" than the "Parody" and just seem like more light-hearted versions of the usual with maybe some Lampshade Hanging. Very often, affectionate parodies are based on humoring as many tropes typical of the genre as possible, and can easily be classified as Troperiffic.

This sort of thing is often popular with fans—and occasionally stars—of the original.

Often times, being parodied is a sign of doing something right. Being parodied by well known artists like "Weird Al" Yankovic or South Park means that you've made something big, and is the price of making a hit. When the parody is well received by the creator of the original, then this is Approval of God.

Many a comedy Fanfic has used this.

See also Satire, Parody, Pastiche and Adam Westing, where the original actor joins in the fun. If an Affectionate Parody is so loving that the parody aspect falls out, it is an Indecisive Parody. Compare Take That, where the parody / reference is a lot less affectionate.

Examples of Affectionate Parody include:

Advertising

  • This commercial spoofs Kaiju. Ultraman in particular.
    • Also 80's hair (neo-classical) power metal.
  • This Irn Bru advert spoofs the flying sequence from Christmas classic The Snowman, showing a variety of Scottish landmarks instead of ones from the South East of England and the music is a parody version of Walking in the Air.

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • While Alan Moore's Miracleman and Watchmen were dark deconstructions of the Superhero genre, his later 1963 is an Affectionate Parody of the Silver Age.
    • The same could be said of his run on Supreme which used many goofy Silver Age-style ideas and stories. Extra points for the fact Moore also made a parody of a parody, taking the Mad Magazine Superman parody Superduperman and writing one based on Supreme, who himself is a Superman analogue.
    • 1963 is an Affectionate Parody of the stories and characters of the Silver Age, but more of a pointed Take That to the creators behind them, with the letters pages implying that "Affable" Al Moore (Moore's fictionalised version of himself within the 1963 universe and a clear take-off of "Smilin'" Stan Lee) is an egotistical tyrant who shamelessly takes credit for the achievements of others.
      • Affectionate towards Jack Kirby and a Take That towards Lee.
  • The Nextwave comic book series.

It's an absolute distillation of the superhero genre. No plot lines, characters, emotions, nothing whatsoever. It's people posing in the street for no good reason. It is people getting kicked, and then exploding.

  • Marvel Comics frequently does this in its own media, with one of the most prominent examples being the world of Peter Porker: The Spectacular Spider-Ham, an anthropomorphic animal version of the Marvel Universe. Alternate reality storylines, such as the ones in Excalibur, also included humorous parodies.
    • What makes the Supermegatopia Spider-Ham an affectionate parody of an affectionate parody, apparently, as the SMT take on her is to make her a cute, if slightly plump, girl. The sarcasm is retained, as well as a slight desire to just stay home and watch TV instead.
    • Really, this was the entire point of the What The title, with one issue featuring Man-ThingThang and Swamp-Thang getting into a largely ineffective fight over who stole whose origin; Frank Casket, the Pulveriser, and his Cloudcuckoolander war against crime; and Wrillimean, a Wolverine spoof who spoke entirely in "Slice and dice! No quarter! I'm the best at what I do and I ain't pretty!"
  • Runaways uses this as well, especially with Victor Mancha, who is programmed to worship in universe Superheroes and often plays straight man to the more Genre Savvy of the group.
  • Calvin's alter-egos are often used to spoof their various genres. Tracer Bullet covers Film Noir, Spaceman Spiff is a parody of stuff like Flash Gordon, and Stupendous Man... well, guess. Occasionally, the comics Calvin was actually reading would be used to give a not-so-affectionate critique of the ultraviolent Dark Age.
  • Word of God states that Kyle Rayner's stint as Parallax during the Sinestro Corps War was meant to be a parody of Kyle's interactions with Hal when he was Green Lantern and Hal was Parallax.
  • 1982's The Fantastic Four Roast, written and laid out by Fred Hembeck and issue #34 of Marvel's What If...? series (1st version) was some of the gut-bustingly funniest send-ups drawn straight ever.
  • Doug Ten Napel's one-shot comic, Solomon Fix is an affectionate parody of the British. It was inspired by the "fancy Englishmen" TenNapel worked with while making Earthworm Jim.
  • Mad Magazine was for nearly its entire run defined by its parodies of major TV shows and movies...and real life as well.
  • Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters is the first Teenage Mutant Samurai Wombats parody of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.


Fan Works


Films

  • This Is Spinal Tap is a fairly obvious example of this, it being a parody of the hard rock and Heavy Metal of the 70s and 80s. It's shown to be an affectionate parody by the sympathetic portrayal of the band towards the end of the film, and the fact that it references things that only fans of the genre could possibly get.
    • Christopher Guest, who played Nigel Tufnel in the movie, has gone on to make several mockumentary's of his own, such as as Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, all of whom can be considered affectionate towards their (rather daft) characters.
  • Stephen Chow's All for the Winner was a parody of Chow Yun-Fat's God of Gamblers, but it was so well-received (by some reports even out-earning the original) it was tied into the series "officially" with two more sequels starring Chow and several other movies without him.
  • Galaxy Quest is an Affectionate Parody of Star Trek, especially Star Trek: The Original Series and its stars (though with some Star Trek: The Next Generation mixed in).
    • Notable in that numerous Star Trek actors have publicly declared their love for the movie. And not just Wil Wheaton (who has always been snarky about being Wesley Crusher); even Patrick Stewart loved it. The Other Wiki has a list of some of the actor's reactions.
      • Not for nothing; it is sometimes described as the best Star Trek movie ever.
      • William Shatner apparently loved it, too, even though he's the one the movie comes closest to actually being less-than-affectionate about. Of course, Shatner's developed a pretty good sense of self-deprecating humor about his past behavior.
        • Shatner did an Affectionate Parody of himself in a little appreciated moved called Free Enterprise.
  • Airplane! is an Affectionate Parody of disaster movies, especially the movie Zero Hour! (with which it shared entire lines of dialogue, such as "The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn't have fish for dinner"), and one of the best Deconstructions you'll ever see. It's now very, very hard to play the "disaster on a plane" trope straight.
    • And it's now impossible to watch the B-movie Zero Hour or read the Arthur Hailey book it's based on (yeah, it's from the guy who wrote Airport) without going into hysterics from visualizing all the jokes in Airplane!
  • Police Squad! and The Naked Gun almost qualify as Affectionate Spoofs of police movies.
    • Don't forget Spy Hard.
      • Oh, we're trying to.
  • Mel Brooks is a Grand Master of this trope. He has made it clear that he only parodies movies and genres he likes. In fact Mel Brooks has said that he could never do a parody of, for instance, slasher flicks because he can only work with genres he respects.
    • Young Frankenstein is an Affectionate Parody of the 30's Universal Frankenstein movies. It is so well done in that style that it is possible to miss that it was a parody.
      • Points to the director for recreating the way the films from back in the day were made; gigantic, multi-story sets (like the lab, that managed to all fit onto screen, with its huge staircase), extended takes done without cuts, as well as just the slow and deliberate way the actors move and talk.
    • Blazing Saddles is an affectionate parody of Westerns, so affectionate that the singer of the theme song, Frankie Laine, did not know it was a parody. They added the whip sounds into the music later.
    • Dracula: Dead and Loving It included a joke on the famous "Children of the night..." quote.
      • Heck, the entire movie was an Affectionate Parody of past Dracula films.
    • Spaceballs parodied Star Wars and included what were very good special effects for the time. The care put into his movies makes them affectionate parodies instead of cheap spoofs.
    • High Anxiety for Alfred Hitchcock films.
    • Robin Hood: Men in Tights for the Robin Hood legends
  • In the same vein, Don't Be a Menace is an Affectionate Parody of "Growing Up In The Hood" movies, sometimes parodying whole scenes (and bringing over actors) from the movies it references.
  • Scream's tongue-in-cheek meta-references to established Horror Tropes were so cleverly done that it initiated a self-aware trend in later horror films.
  • The Fifth Element can be seen as straight Science Fiction flick, but works very well as a friendly parody of common action and science fiction concepts, particularly those of European sci-fi/fantasy comics.
  • My Name Is Nobody takes this concept to its logical extreme, no wonder as it was produced by Sergio Leone himself. Whimsical, hysterical, warm and ultimately an achingly gentle farewell to the genre he himself created, it's a wonderful mood-rollercoaster of satire and homage, to the point you will cry Manly Tears every bit as much as laugh while watching it.
  • Enchanted was Disney's Affectionate Parody of... itself, replete with Shout Outs and and subverted tropes. Not that it didn't turn out to still be a good film.
  • Slither is an affectionate parody of (roughly Seventies-Eighties era) horror movies.
  • Grease was an Affectionate Parody of 1950s teen musicals, although most people don't seem to realize this.
    • So was Cry-Baby, only they made sure everyone would realize it.
  • Murder By Death is an Affectionate Parody of Agatha Christie-type murder mysteries.
    • See also its companion piece, The Cheap Detective (spoofing hardboiled detectives).
    • Another Affectionate Parody of detective movies is Clue.
  • The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is an Affectionate Parody of B-rated sci-fi horror movies from the 50s.
  • Samurai Fiction affectionately parodies traditional samurai epics while including a few modern art-film touches—and a rock-and-roll soundtrack supplied by co-star Tomoyasu Hotei.
  • Music and Lyrics is an Affectionate Parody of "disposable" bubblegum pop music, and it's slightly pretentious-yet-cheesy tendencies, from the 1980s—especially in the mock MTV video clip for fictional band Pop!'s big hit "Pop! Goes My Heart"—to the present day, with the Britney / Christina Aguilera-type pop star character.
  • Snakes on a Plane is an affectionate sendup of a number of genres, such as airplane disaster, animal horror, and even action-adventure.
  • Chicken Run is a stop motion animated Affectionate Parody of The Great Escape and other prisoner-of-war escape movies. Albeit with a happier ending.
  • The Fearless Vampire Killers, or, Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck is a parody of the Hammer Horror vampire films that were so popular when it was made, and it works so well that it's sometimes more suspenseful than they are. This was in itself later adapted into the stage musical Tanz der Vampire, which includes songs mimicking various musical styles.
  • The Turkish move GORA parodies, well, pretty much every big-budget Hollywood sci-fi movie ever made. At the beginning, the extraterrestrials are talking in English before realizing what they're doing and switching into Turkish. The prisoners on the alien ship carry lightsaber shivs. Even the main character Arif is very conscious about doing things 'right', including finding an appropriate hero costume and having his sidekicks film him as he embarks on his adventure.
  • Tremors, while not an out-and-out parody, includes several gentle swipes at 50's monster-movie plots.
  • Tropic Thunder is an Affectionate Parody of both classic Vietnam films such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon, as well as the wider absurdities of Hollywood itself.
  • Wet Hot American Summer is an Affectionate Parody of the multitude of teen summer camp comedies released in the '80s, such as Meatballs.
  • UHF is rife with Affectionate Parodies.
    • Since Weird Al Yankovic not only starred in, but co-wrote the film, this wasn't exactly surprising.
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a very affectionate parody of the old B-movies Richard O'Brien grew up loving.
  • Mars Attacks! is an affectionate parody of 1950's science fiction B movies.
  • The Gamers knows too much about D&D to make it a normal parody, and its jokes are mostly aimed for the same people it mocks. An example would be most of the Bard jokes in the second movie.
  • Rustlers' Rhapsody makes fun of all those B-grade singing-cowboy westerns produced back in the 50s. But it makes fun in a friendly way.
  • The Evil Dead series includes several subtle jabs at common horror movie tropes, but Army of Darkness is pretty much a giant, overt Affectionate Parody of Heroic Fantasy films. And it is awesome.
  • Star Wreck, a Finnish amateur film, makes fun of Star Trek and Babylon 5
  • High School High does this for Save Our Students films.
  • Fatal Instinct which parodied "Femme Fatale" noir.
  • Walk Hard parodies musical biopics.
  • Top Secret parodied World War Two espionage movies, though it's set in the Sixties.
  • Hot Shots was a parody of Top Gun. Part Deux was a Vietnam / Rambo parody.
  • Baseketball spoofs inspirational sports movies.
  • Mafia! spoofs (you guessed it) gangster films. This was Lloyd Bridges' final film.
  • Kung Pow!, Steve Oedekirk's awesome tribute to martial arts flicks.
  • The Korean film The Host is hard to take as anything other than an Affectionate Parody of Asian monster movies. Watched with a group of friends, the movie is hilarious.
  • Pootie Tang, The Hebrew Hammer, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, and Black Dynamite are a few examples of this trope on Blaxploitation movies.
  • The made-for-TV Totally Awesome parodies 80's teen flicks.
  • Eight Legged Freaks was an affectionate parody of monster B movies. Had the nice blend of features like the characters playing their roles without any obvious irony, the classic trope of toxic waste causing spiders to mutate, and it even had spiders acting cartoony and making cartoony noises, and yet everything was played straight.
  • "The Girl Hunt" ballet in The Band Wagon lovingly parodies tropes from hardboiled and noir fiction and film, from the Femme Fatale to the Private Eye Monologue.
  • Die Hard started as both an action film and an affectionate parody of 80s action films, notably in casting Bruce Willis, who was best known before Die Hard for comedy roles. The movie ended up becoming the template for future action movies and transformed Willis into an action star.
    • And the Die Hard movies eventually became an Affectionate Parody of themselves.
  • Hot Fuzz self consciously uses every possible cop movie trope it can, often hanging a lampshade on them, while paying tribute to those films.
    • And its precursor Shaun of the Dead. Star and co-writer Simon Pegg said it was closer to "a love letter" to Romero's zombie films than a parody.
  • Austin Powers and The Second Best Secret Agent in the World are affectionate parodies of the James Bond style of spy movies.
    • Which were heavily inspired by Our Man Flint. Ausin lampshades this, saying In Like Flint is his favorite movie.
  • Hobgoblins was clearly meant to be such a parody of Gremlins.
    • Also, it's an incredibly stupid idea considering that Gremlins is itself a parody, of both the "monster attacks small American town" genre of horror films and the "A Boy and His X" genre of feel-good family films.
  • Support Your Local Sheriff is an Affectionate Parody of The Western. Interestingly it's not a bad example of that genre even if you mange to take it seriously. Support Your Local Gunfighter, a non-sequel follow-up produced by more or less the same people, treads the same ground, with less success.
  • The Princess Bride is a parody of medieval romances.
  • Press Start, to every videogame in existence.
  • Kung Fu Hustle is, of course, an Affectionate Parody to modern Wuxia genre.
  • The Muppets Take Manhattan is an Affectionate Parody of 30's/40's-era movie musicals.
  • While Punch-Drunk Love is a Deconstruction of Adam Sandler's roles as a sociopathic manchild, Anger Management is its parody.
  • The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel qualify. They make light of several stories and moments from the original series while still standing true as film adaptations.
  • Stanley Donen's sadly all-but-forgotten 1978 film Movie Movie was a loving Valentine to the cheesy B-list 1930s/early 40s era black and white films Hollywood would churn out during the height of the old studio system. Complete with lines so cornball they'd make Captain America blush. It's glorious fun for fans of vintage kitsch.
  • Vampires Suck parodies... well you know.
  • Down With Love parodied 50s/60s romantic comedies.
  • Throw Momma from the Train is a love letter to Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
  • Some Like It Hot is replete with shout outs to past gangster films.
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs parodied disaster films.
  • The Big Lebowski affectionately parodies the works of Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep particularly, by showing what would happen if you took a standard twisty-turny Chandler-style plot and occupied the role of the hero with a lazy hippy slacker instead of his usual hard-boiled Private Detective character.
  • Mystery Team does this for Kid Detective series in the Encyclopedia Brown / Three Investigators mode
  • Paul parodied "first contact" alien films like ET the Extraterrestrial.
  • Shark Tale is an Affectionate Parody of gangster films.
  • Igor is an Affectionate Parody of Universal Horror and the Frankenstein movies in particular.
  • The Beatles film, Help! was an Affectionate Parody of James Bond movies.
  • Kung Fu Panda is an Affectionate Parody of Wuxia films.
  • Rango is an Affectionate Parody of the Spaghetti Western.
  • Super Junior's film, "Attack on the Pin-Up Boys" is an Affectionate Parody of the idol culture, obsessions with passing fads, and the life of a teenager set in a High School AU. The second half of the film dips into Deconstructive Parody territory though as it becomes more introspective than the first half.
  • Man Of The House parodied the role that made Tommy Lee Jones famous, the lawman.
  • Stardust: the affectionate parody of classic fairy tales and fantasy genre.
  • Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer parodies Hillbilly Horrors.
  • Flubber and Inspector Gadget parodies anything from Disney.
  • Woody Allen parodied genres like '70s sci-fi (Sleeper) and epic historical romances (Love and Death). A section of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but were afraid to ask parodied Italian film making.
  • Be a man in Mulan would be an Affectionate Parody of a Boot Camp Episode.

Literature

  • James Bond in the original Ian Fleming novels was actually a parody of spy thrillers of the time. That didn't last in the public's eye as long as him.
    • Which makes Austin Powers, the "Flint" movies, and Get Smart parodies of a parody.
    • And the animated Inspector Gadget is a parody of a parody of a parody...
  • Bored of the Rings is, naturally, an affectionate parody of The Lord of the Rings. The affection is frequently difficult to spot, but the brilliant extended spoof of Tolkien's foreword and prologue is testament to how the book is genuinely funny only when it takes the original wording nearly word-for-word.
  • Very early Discworld novels were an affectionate parody of fantasy cliches (and some specific settings). Elements of this still occur in the books, but are no longer the focus.
  • Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's first novel, was an affectionate parody of gothic romances.
  • Likewise Bret Harte's Selina Sedilia
  • Lisa Papademetriou's The Wizard, The Witch And Two Girls From Jersey is an affectionate parody of children's/YA fantasy tropes. Two girls from the real world end up in Galma, a land that bears more than a passing similarity to Narnia, Middle Earth, Oz, and other beloved fictional settings. Even as fun is poked at each element, they are also taken seriously on their own terms.
  • The Enchanted Forest Chronicles are affectionate parodies of fairy tales in general. Including but not limited to Sleeping Beauty (Cimorene's "Great Aunt Rose, who was asleep for a hundred years") and Rumpelstiltskin (a dwarf who ends up raising over a dozen children because he always asked the girls to guess his name, but they never could, even after he changed it, so he had to take their babies).
  • Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain (mandatory HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) novels are a weird case. While their main purpose is to point out and spoof the more ridiculous aspects of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, they actually take place in it, and are apparently considered canon. So, it's a strange blend of this trope and Take That, Us.
  • Doon was put out by National Lampoon (who also put out Bored of the Rings). It's a clever parody of Dune, covering everything from the complex ecosystem of Dune to Herbert's writing style (i.e., "it is a France-like thing"; "Girl-Children Just Want to Have Pleasure-Fun").
  • Snooze: The Best of Our Magazine (1986) is supposed to be a collection of writing from the New Yorker. (It even includes parodies of the kind of cartoon found in the magazine, and also things like filler paragraphs and drawings.) It qualifies as an Affectionate Parody because only people who read the New Yorker would relate to Snooze, and at least two New Yorker writers contributed to it.
  • Casabianca: innumerable parodies, especially Casabazonka by Spike Milligan, are collectively vastly better known than the original.
  • The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle) , The Princess Bride (William Goldman) and Stardust (Neil Gaiman) are all affectionate parodies of fairytale conventions, although the foremost is occasionally taken more seriously.
  • Edward Eager's Knight's Castle parodies Ivanhoe and E. Nesbit's The Magic City.
  • The first part of the essay Ernest Hemingway by Dwight Mac Donald parodies Hemingway's style of narrative.
  • Documents in the Case of Elizabeth Akeley by Richard Lupoff is a sequel and parody of HP Lovecraft's Cosmic Horror Story short story The Whisperer In Darkness.
  • The Antarctic Express, a parodic mashup of The Polar Express and Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.
  • James Thurber's story "The Scotty Who Knew Too Much" is an affectionate, but unflinching, parody of the Hard-boiled detective genre.
  • Good Omens not only spoofs The Omen and other fictional tales of the end times, but also has recurring plot elements that tapes left in the car for over a fortnight inexplicably turn into "Best of Queen" tapes as well as conspiracy theories of what really happened with Elvis.
  • The Tumbleweed Dossier is an affectionate parody of The X-Files.
  • George R. R. Martin, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, once wrote a short story where his character Jaime Lannister fights in an Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny against Rand al'Thor, the hero of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. When writing about his late friend's characters, Martin did an exaggerated, yet fond, pastiche that mocks without being mean.
  • In I Moved Your Cheese by Deepak Malhotra, characters speak of "the good book", strongly alluding to Who Moved My Cheese?.

Live Action TV

  • The Doctor Who episode "Bad Wolf" (a.k.a. "Reality Shows of the Daleks") does this by taking the Reality Show genre and The Weakest Link) to its logical extreme.
    • Likewise, the episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp" is an Affectionate Parody of murder mysteries, especially those written by Agatha Christie.
    • "Love & Monsters" straddles the line between this and Take That of the show's own fan-base. It affectionately parodies the 'good' fans, showing them to be, if socially awkward and a bit geeky, ultimately decent, likeable people who come together and form connections with each other based on their shared affection and love for 'The Doctor' and what he represents. Furthermore, these connections allow them to express and develop their creativity and even fall in love with one another. The 'bad' type of fan, who treats fandom as it were some kind of joyless, ritualistic vocation with themselves, naturally, the bullying egotists at the top of the hierarchy? Well, they're presented as a Doctor Who monster. Read into that what you will.
    • The Comic Relief spoof "The Curse of Fatal Death" was written by Steven Moffat, who now runs the Uncancelled show as of 2010. That says it all.
    • Iris Wildthyme (a character in the spin-offs who may or may not be a Time Lady) has her own series of Big Finish audios; for one season, each audio parodied a different decade of Doctor Who (the 1990s one in particular is pure Eighth Doctor TV Movie).
  • The Carol Burnett Show did many parodies over the years that would qualify for the trope, but one of the most celebrated was the show's 1976 takeoff of Gone with the Wind, called "Went With the Wind" (with Burnett playing Starlett, who descends a long staircase wearing a green curtain with hanging rod), The costume was designed by Bob Mackie, and is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
  • Stargate SG-1 episodes "Wormhole X-Treme" and "200" are affectionate parodies of sci-fi tropes in general. For God's sake, they have Willie Garson playing an alien soldier! To be fair, he was a nebbishy television executive in these two episodes.
    • Somewhat of sci-fi tropes in general, but mostly of Stargate SG-1 itself in particular. The Show Within a Show was too much like the SGC itself to be regarded as a generic sci-fi show, and many of the jokes were at the expense of events in Stargate SG-1 itself that aren't all that common in the sci-fi genre.
  • Supernatural mocks the horror genre in "Hollywood Babylon", with some Lampshade Hanging thrown in. They also had "Ghostfacers", mocking Ghost Hunters which was also A Day in the Limelight for two characters from a previous episode. Dean, at the end, admitted of the pilot for the show, "That was half-awesome."
    • Season 5: "Changing Channels" was an Affectionate Parody of TV shows in general, including The Odd Couple (with a bit of a Gender Flip Laverne and Shirley thrown into the opening credits), Japanese games shows, CSI: Miami, Knight Rider, and a nice Take That to Grey's Anatomy.
      • "The Real Ghostbusters" was one big parody of the fanbase and its conventions (not to mention its obsessive insanity), though they had to make a bunch of the fictional fans male so as not to piss off the nutty female fans too much.
    • "Monster Movie" is a parody of... well, guess.
  • SCTV did all kinds of film and TV parodies:
    • Rome, Italian Style—Italian cinema, both neo-realist and whimsical, down to the dubbed dialogue the films were once saddled with in the U.S.
    • The flicks featured on Monster Chiller Horror Theatre. Once, Count Floyd realized during his show that Whispers of the Wolf was actually an Ingmar Bergman film, making for an entirely different stylistic parody within the skit (it's largely a spoof of Persona).
    • Neil Simon's Nutcracker Suite (his late 1970s output).
    • The extended Godfather parody.
    • CBC content was often spoofed, and was the basis for Bob & Doug McKenzie most famously.
    • Mel's Rock Pile (American Bandstand and the like).
    • Polynesiantown (Chinatown).
    • Gangway for Miracles (The Miracle Worker).
    • I Was a Teenage Communist (1950s teen horror and the Red Scare).
    • The Merv Griffin Show - The Special Edition (the talk show cross-bred with the reedit of Close Encounters of the Third Kind).
    • And many, many more.
  • With Saturday Night Live, there was Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood which the target, Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood , really liked.
  • Super Sentai / Power Rangers
    • Gekisou Sentai Carranger, an over-the-top parody of every Super Sentai trope in existence.
    • Power Rangers Ninja Storm has tons of fun with this trope, throwing in a ton of self-referential humour towards the tropes of Power Rangers. Lothor, the Big Bad of the series, was practically a walking Lampshade Hanger.
    • Interestingly, Power Rangers RPM did much the same thing as Turbo and made it work pretty well, despite having the darkest subject matter since Time Force. One moment things will be dead serious, with particular emphasis on dead, and the next, you'll have characters asking questions like "why do our Zords have eyes?" and "Why do explosions appear every time we morph?" and of course "Is that really spandex?" (Answer: NO.)
    • Now there's Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger, a side entry to the main franchise that seems to be gearing up to be an Adult Swim-style take on not only Sentai, but the kind of Otaku that still watch it as adults.
  • Fred Armisen, who plays Prince in a recurring Saturday Night Live sketch, is a lifelong fan and did the sketch because he hoped it would lead to him meeting Prince.
    • Armisen seems to like getting in affectionate parodies of music - another sketch of his was about a father's Hardcore Punk band reuniting at his daughter's wedding, with hilarity and broken glass ensuing... Two thirds of the actors playing the band actually were in hardcore bands in the eighties (Armisen himself and Dave Grohl). While the characters never showed up again, Armisen apparently liked doing it enough that he also released the song performed in the skit as a 7 single credited to the Fake Band.
  • Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible is a loving parody of the Hammer Horror of the 60's and 70's,with cameos, nods and references all over the place. And it was written by and stars Steve "Alan Partridge" Coogan.
  • The X-Files episode Jose Chung's From Outer Space is an Affectionate Parody of the show and people who believe in aliens. Later Millennium would do the same with Jose Chung's The Doomsday Defense.
  • Meitantei no Okite is an affectionate parody of most detective tropes and the genre as a whole. Note that the creator, Higashino Keigo, is a popular mystery and crime writer so ultimately he parodies himself at the same time.
  • F Troop is often seen as an Affectionate Parody of westerns.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series' "A Piece of the Action" was an Affectionate Parody of gangster movies.
  • Rutland Weekend Television had a few of these, such as The Old Gay Whistle Test ("Old Grey Whistle Test"), Rutland Five-O, and 24 Hours In Tunbridge Wells (one in a series of 'Classically bad American movies', including sailors singing and dancing).
  • Childrens Hospital is an Affectionate Parody of medical dramas, mostly Grey's Anatomy.
    • One can't help but think that it was the exact building used in Scrubs.
  • The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Zeppo" is, like Enchanted, a parody of the show itself, using strictly Xander's point of view to show loads and loads of out-of-context In Medias Res snippets of Buffy cliches and tropes that any Buffy fan could tell would make sense in context if the full story was ever told, but come across as hilariously random, nonsensical, and melodramatic as shown.
  • The Dick Van Dyke Show episode "It May Look Like a Walnut" is a parody of both Twilight Zone episodes and the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
  • The Charmed episode "Chick Flick" was an affectionate parody of slasher films, giving us Piper's immortal line "I'm being stalked by psycho killers and I hide in the shower?". "Charmed Noir" from the seventh season is the same for Noir Gangster films.
  • Community does quite a few of these. Notably food-based mafia film Contemporary American Poultry, paintball action movie Modern Warfare and zombie horror flick Epidemiology
  • The Suite Life on Deck: the Starship Tipton basically rips off Star Trek. they even got George Takei (Sulu) to play London's Great-great-great-great-great grandson.
  • In a sense, the Hannah Montana character (and certain aspects of the music and lyrics) seems to be an Affectionate Parody of the kind of blonde-haired, energetic, high-fashion female Idol Singer that gained fame in the early 2000's, at least while they still had a teen-pop image and style. The younger Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore and Disney's own Hilary Duff are obvious references.
  • Dick and Dom in da Bungalow parodied lots of GameShows for the finale at the end of each week's show, which would end with "creamy muck muck" (custard) being flung everywhere. They used current shows- Muck Or No Muck, Who Wants To Be A Muckionaire- and older ones, which the children competing had probably never heard of, like Muckphrase ((Catchphrase). They occasionaly parodied another genre, such as doing political talk show Question Muck (Question Time), the week after a politician had suggested that Da Bungalow was too lavatorial.
  • Danger 5 lovingly parodies sixties cinema and TV, pulp fiction, and old Japanese sci-fi. It features a Multinational Team tasked with killing Stupid Jetpack Hitler and thwarting his various mad schemes in a 60s Alternate History. Also has Pulp Magazine parodies on its website.
  • Batman: This article argues that the mere fact of playing a relatively ambitious live-action production of a Superhero (viewed at the time as an inherently worthless material) had to be played as a superficial, deliberately light self-parody devised by mainstreamers who never even suspected that a rich timeless fantasy was lurking underneath.
  • Jimmy Fallon put a twist on jokes about American football player Tim Tebow with "Tebowie", who doubles as a loving spoof of Glam Rock-era David Bowie and sings Tebow-specific versions of "Space Oddity" and "Ziggy Stardust" that are funnier for deliberately patterning the lyrics after the structure of the original songs. (The former becomes a dialogue between Tebow and Jesus Christ rather than Ground Control and Major Tom, for instance.)
  • Modern Family's season three finale features a beautiful parody of telenovelas in general.


Music

  • The Pet Shop Boys song "The Night I Fell in Love" blurs the lines between this and Take That; a parody of the homophobia both inherent and explicit in the songs and public persona of Eminem by imagining him having a homosexual affair with a starstruck young fan, the song is written in a gentle, sweet fashion that is more teasing than anything else. Eminem's response, however, was a bit less gentle; at one point in one of his songs he runs them over with his car. Someone's a bit touchy, it seems.
    • Artists take the occasional potshot at Mr. Mathers because they know that, no matter how mild or teasing the shot, he'll double the publicity for them by completely overreacting.
      • Is it Mathers overreacting because he's genuinely insecure, or is he overreacting because it's all part of the act?
  • Cannabis Corpse
  • Unlike Bob Rivers, Weird Al's parodies usually seem to have a touch of class in them, even those that make fun of the singer directly, like "Smells Like Nirvana". He does it well enough that even the artists he parodies like his work; Kurt Cobain, for example, loved "Smells Like Nirvana". It helps that Al asks first (which is why he's never parodied a Prince song—Prince Rogers Nelson always says no).
    • "Weird Al's Traffic Jam is a parody of Prince's music style.
    • Conversely, Michael Jackson found "Fat" and "Eat It" (parodies of Bad and Beat It respectively) to be so hilarious (even going so far is to lend him the same sets from his videos to make new ones), that he gave Weird Al permission to parody all his songs, as well as all future songs.
      • With the exception of ("Snack All Night") (Black or White), which Jackson said was too serious a message, though he still performs it live.
    • He did get in trouble with Coolio for "Amish Paradise", for unclear reasons. Apparently, Al's people talked to Coolio's people, who said yes, but Coolio HIMSELF didn't approve it. (And got angry about it.)
      • When he found out about Coolio's response, Al apologized, like the class act he is. Eventually, Coolio got over it too, and gave Al a hug.
    • Something similar happened when Al wanted to do a parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful". Apparently Al was granted permission to do the parody, but after he'd recorded "You're Pitiful", Atlantic (Blunt's label) refused the permission, so Al dropped the tune from his latest record. However, he still performs it (and a few other refused parodies) live.
      • Not only does he perform "You're Pitiful" live, but he also released the song for free, just as a Take That against Atlantic.
    • Notably, when Weird Al asked Mark Knopfler for permission to parody Dire Strait's "Money for Nothing" as "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies," Knopfler granted the request with the condition that Knopfler play the guitar part himself.
      • Likewise with his Doors style parody, "Craigslist," Ray Manzerek requested to play the synth part himself.
  • Both Bad News and Spinal Tap are affectionate parodies of Heavy Metal Music bands.
  • Likewise The Rutles (originating in Rutland Weekend Television sketch), who spoof The Beatles.
    • George Harrison was actually involved in the project.
    • The above three examples all originated as TV or movie mockumentaries, but the music parodies are good enough to stand on their own.
    • Massacration is a similar (but even more awesome) example. Originally created by Brazilian comedy group Hermes & Renato to star in a music video making fun of Heavy Metal band conventions (such as Brazilian metal bands singing in English, or the emphasis on macabre imagery in lyrics and clips), they ended up becoming quite successful as a real Heavy Metal band, even though they're still spoofing the genre; they've even released albums and opened shows for serious bands, like Sepultura.
  • The Hee Bee Gee Bees spoofed numerous artists of the 70s and 80s. Now sadly almost forgotten.
  • P.D.Q. Bach—supposedly the talentless, ne'er-do-well son of Johann Sebastian Bach (1807-1742?). Many albums of P.D.Q. Bach's music exist (performed by classical musicians). There's also a biography. They are actually the creation of Peter Schickele, who is far better known for P.D.Q. Bach than for the serious classical music he composes.
    • "Bach Portrait", on a P.D.Q. Bach album but credited to Schickele, is an Affectionate Parody of Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait".
  • The band Flight of the Conchords has produced several songs which are parodies of certain types of music. "Think About It" for example, parodies music which uses the desolation of the modern world as subject matter.
    • Specific examples: "I'm Not Crying" - (10CC - "I'm Not in Love"); "You Don't Have to be a Prostitute" (The Police - "Roxanne"); "Inner-City Pressure" (Pet Shop Boys - "West End Girls").
    • And then, of course, there's "Bowie", which needs no explanation.
  • "Sylvia's Mother", written by Shel Silverstein and performed by Dr Hook & The Medicine Show, could be considered an affectionate parody of heartbroken teenage love songs.
  • Da Vincis Notebook has their song Title of the Song, which parodies any/all boyband love ballad. How do they do so? They sing in verse what typically goes into the song at that given point. Including when the singer should "drop to their knees to elicit a crowd response" and "hold a high note".
    • For those who don't get the joke, Title of the Song refers to whatever the song would be stereotypically called by a given band, the title of which is often used as during the refrain of the song. Basically, instead of writing a boy-band love ballad, they sing the how to of writing a boy-band love ballad.
    • The comments on the vid/song are also great examples of Affectionate Parody on most comments made on YouTube.
      • Paul and Storm (a duo consisting of two former members) have a number of these as well. Most notable are their Randy Newman Theme Songs, but they also have "John Mellencamp's 'Theme from 24'", and a series of supposition songs ("If James Taylor Were on Fire" "If Bob Dylan Were Hiding at the Bottom of a Well" "If James Taylor Were on Fire at the Bottom of a Well" "If Leon Redbone Suffered a Debilitating Head Injury" "If Aaron Neville Were Waiting for a Parking Spot at the Mall But Someone Else Snagged It" and finally "If They Might Be Giants Were the Ice Cream Man").
        • Once, for the Masters of Song Fu competition, Paul and Storm were asked to do a song in the style of their friend Jonathan Coulton. The result was the song "Live", which used the "mad scientist in love" theme that was part of some of Coulton's songs, most notably "Skullcrusher Mountain". Coulton returned the favor (as part of the same competition) with the song "Big Dick Farts a Polka".
  • Freddie Mercury's "The Great Pretender" video spoofs his band Queen's past music videos, and Mercury's image as a Large Ham.
  • The Blue Man Group song "It's Time to Start" parodies rock concerts by explaining what rock concert tropes the audience should carry out, ranging from the realistic ("Rock Concert Movement #1, the basic head bob", and "#2, the one-armed fist pump") to the ridiculous ("#4, the behind-the-head leg stretch", which the Blue Men proceed to actually do). #3 ("the up-and-down jumping motion") receives a step-by-step explanation, though in live performances it's been replaced with #10 ("getting a closer look at the audience") which involves footage from a miniature camera supposedly being shoved down an audience member's throat.
  • Tragedy, an "all metal tribute to the Bee Gees," parodies both the Bee Gees and glam metal. And it's awesome.
  • Donna by 10cc sends up numerous cheesy songs from the late fifties and early sixties. Made even funnier by the fact that one of the songs it's sending up has the same title (but is by Marty Wilde).
  • Kompressor's work affectionately parodies industrial music.
  • Anna Russell's parodies of popular and classical music varied widely in their sincerity. In her "Survey of Singing from Madrigals to Modern Opera," though the parodies of madrigals and coloratura arias are too silly to be true, "Wir gehen in den Automaten" could be mistaken for a Bach cantata if the lyrics weren't about ordering bacon at the Automat, and "Aria from 'The Psychiatrist'" only sounds insane when compared with Magda's aria from The Consul and its repetition of the question "What is your name?"
  • Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention recorded an album entitled "Cruising with Ruben & the Jets", an affectionate parody of fifties doo-wop music. The result was so authentic-sounding, many people mistook the songs for another band entirely, causing the album border on an Indecisive Parody.
  • Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer sends up much of modern Hip Hop with a British accent.
  • As "the greatest fake MCs on Earth," The Lonely Island have taken everything they love about rap, hip-hop, R&B, and club music for the sole purpose of making songs about making dookie your pants, having sex with piles of manure, premature ejaculation, and most importantly, the Space Olympics.
  • Psychostick's #1 Radio $ingle makes fun of the pop-rock Ear Worm songs that are always on the radio. They also did a parody of Drowning Pool's "Bodies" called "I Can Only Count To Four".
  • The Dukes of Stratosphear was XTC's send-up of psychedelic rock.
  • Steel Panther started out as a Hair Metal tribute band. Now, it makes parodies that take the genre's notorious Self-Deprecation and double entendres and turns them Up to Eleven.

New Media

  • In contrast to how Encyclopedia Dramatica is largely nothing more than a series of critical Take Thats, Uncyclopedia tends to veer in the direction of Affectionate Parody in its articles.
  • Pokebattles is a major affectional parody site. It parodies Pokémon, with a battle system identical to Pokémon Red. They always say "used" before attacks and multiple actions. They parody multiple other things including Star Wars; Luke is a character. Doompuff, the evil rabid Jigglypuff of doom, is The Juggernaut. A link to Red Version is .
  • The LOLCat Bible Translation Project. It's exactly what it sounds like. Some parts are more affectionate than others, depending on the "translator", but it's generally good-spirited, often hilarious, and occasionally surprisingly well-thought-out (see the lolcat "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God").
  • The Meathead Perspective consists primarily of affectionate parody of the band Nine Inch Nails and frontman Trent Reznor (especially the flash animations).
  • While Mystery Science Theater 3000 doesn't qualify, Riff Trax does in some cases. Notably their parody of The Lord of the Rings, which contains numerous references to Tolkien's writings.
    • Some if these you actually have to be fairly familiar with the writings yourself to even get. For example, in the intro Isildur's death is blamed on the ring's treachery, which causes Mike to remark that being a bloodthirsty tyrant may have had something to do with it.
  • Ray Larabie made affectionate parody fonts.

Professional Wrestling

  • WWE wrestler Gregory Helms's former character, The Hurricane, was an Affectionate Parody of Superheroes, especially Superman and the Adam West Batman. His character previous to that was an Affectionate Parody of comic-book fanboys, as he trotted out his encyclopedic knowledge of the Green Lantern and compared situations from the comic to everything he came across in his wrestling career (in fact, his costume as Hurricane was heavily influenced by the costume worn by Kyle Rayner as the Green Lantern).
  • The Lay Cool characters were affectionate parodies of the Alpha Bitch with them being fashion obsessed, finishing each other's sentences, their own Buffy-Speak catchphrases and a whole lotta Les Yay. And they were still some of the best written heels on Smackdown.


Radio

  • Stan Freberg recorded several Affectionate Parodies of the radio series Dragnet, including "St. George and the Dragonet" and "Little Blue Riding Hood" ("only the color of the hood has been changed to prevent an investigation"). The supposed Dragnet Catch Phrase "just the facts, ma'am" originated in these parodies.
  • I'm Sorry Ill Read That Again always had an extended sketch at the end of each episode, presented as the Prune Play Of The Week. These were often affectionate parodies of plays, books, genres, or whatever was on TV at the time. Their parody of Star Trek: The Original Series is quite memorable, mostly for being a parody of something still well-known.

Spock: Illogical, captain. Allow me to raise my eyebrow to signify how ridiculous that is.
Announcer: See him! See him raise the incredible eyebrow!
Spock: And now...the other eyebrow. (fanfare)
Announcer: The other eyebrow! Oh, the talent! Oh, the joy!
Spock: And now...(drumroll)...both eyebrows at once! (fanfare)
Announcer: Fantastic! Magnificient!


Tabletop Games

  • The Pokethulhu roleplaying game is an arguably affectionate but very tongue in cheek cross-parody of, guess what, Pokémon and the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • Depending on who you ask, the Munchkin roleplaying game series is either an affectionate parody or a Take That at the selfish, loot-grubbing behavior of some gamers.


Theater

  • Avenue Q is an Affectionate Parody of the Muppets and Sesame Street. Of course, some of the puppeteers of Avenue Q were once Sesame Street workers themselves.
  • Blue Man Group is, in part, an Affectionate Parody of the modern art scene that ironically has become far more successful than most serious examples of performance art.
  • Spamalot and The Producers both mock musical theater conventions while simultaneously celebrating them.
  • "What Am I To Do?", the ridiculously purple love song sung by a Noel Coward-like character in The Man Who Came to Dinner, was written by Noel Coward's long-time friend Cole Porter (who even signed his name on the song's manuscript as "Noel Porter").
  • Much of the musical Bye Bye Birdie revolves around Affectionate Parody of 1950s rock 'n' roll.
  • While Don Quixote is a Take That of its subject matter, Man of La Mancha is more of an affectionate parody.
  • The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet is an affectionate parody of Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare as well as Dr. Seuss.
  • Arsenic and Old Lace affectionately parodied murder plays, with a Genre Savvy protagonist and nowhere-near-sinister killers.
  • Two Gentlemen of Lebowski is a loving tribute to both The Big Lebowski and the works of William Shakespeare. The affection for Lebowski is clear, but the affection for the bard really shines through in the print version, which features "annotations" explaining the then-current references Shakespeare was making as he wrote the play.
  • Done to Death parodies all sorts of the Mystery Fiction genre. However it is also very much an Indecisive Parody.


Video Games

  • The RTS Majesty: A Fantasy Kingdom Sim puts the player in charge of a fantasy kingdom that works the way they do in RPGs. As such the city guards are helpless against anything bigger than the giant rats infesting the sewers, and the sovereign has to summon heroes (who are not directly controllable units) and post rewards for things like the ancient evil castles littering the landscape in order to get anything done.
  • The Capcom brawler God Hand glaringly mixes together nearly every classic Beat'Em Up Cliché in the book, including Pac-Man-esque food pickups, outrageously silly enemies in far-fetched environments and a puddle-deep storyline that's only there to string together all the game's fighting. The game has also been speculated to be an affectionate parody of Shonen Fighting Series such as Fist of the North Star.
    • Speaking of Clover Studios, don't forget to mention Viewtiful Joe, although whereas God Hand affectionately parodies the gameplay of old beat-em-ups, Viewtiful Joe affectionately parodies the plots, characters, and settings of Tokusatsu and Comic Book heroes in general. The actual gameplay is a highly enjoyable twist on 2D beat-em-ups, however.
    • The Wii game MadWorld, a spiritual successor to God Hand, continues its ancestor's stint of parody by turning the focus from Japanese entertainment (videogames and anime) to western entertainment (gory, violent video games, reality television and graphic novels), sending up their violent tendencies in a comedic, Tom and Jerry Itchy and Scratchy kind of way.
    • And then we have Bayonetta, which is shoving as much Rated "M" for Money, Up to Eleven & Oh Crap moments into a Devil May Cry-esque Beat'Em Up. And it's just as amazing at that sounds.
  • Apollo Justice Ace Attorney takes the opportunity of a new main character to occasionally parody the very series that it belongs to. Apollo gets reprimanded for shouting the series Catch Phrase in court and often laments the fact that he never gets any normal clients, Trucy advises him that "Daddy had days where everything would go wrong too" and Phoenix reminisces on his days of using the Present command and flashing his Attorney's Badge to everyone.
  • The Tex Murphy games: Every plot element from old-school, black and white, noir private eye films are lovingly re-created and mocked.
  • The Leisure Suit Larry games started out as classic parodies of the text-adventure games their own company was famous for.
  • Konami's aptly-named Parodius series is a parody of one of their own series. What series, you ask? You have ten seconds to guess.
    • Konami also parodied its own Castlevania series from the 8- and 16-bit era with the Kid Dracula series. Kid Dracula himself appears as a character in one of the Parodius games.
    • After Parodius, other companies made silly versions of their most famous shoot'em up series. For instance, Taito mocked Space Invaders with Akkanvader (AKA "Space Invaders: Attack of the Lunar Loonies"), Namco spoofed Galaga with the Cosmo Gang arcade game and Hudson Soft made fun of the Star Soldier series of games with Star Parodier.
    • Mesal Gear Solid was an extended parody of Metal Gear Solid, which would have been better if a parody of Metal Gear wasn't just the same thing but with a 'laugh track'. Still, there's a twisted beauty in watching a husky-voiced little monkey croak out a monologue about how the use of mines in combat is a humanitarian disgrace.
  • In a similar vein, Metal Wolf Chaos is From Software cheerily mocking the everything-to-eleven spirit of anime, flag-waving American patriotism and their own Armored Core series. They clearly love all of these things.
  • The Disgaea series frequently parodies anime and its cliches. Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! is a parody himself.

Raspberyl: Are we even allowed to parody that? (In reponse a parody of A Dog of Flanders, and the latest in a chain of parodies)
Sapphire: I don't think so...

  • In The World Ends With You, the bonus chapter Another Day plays with some of the tropes common to Super Sentai-style shows (dubbing the cast "Crayon Warriors") and RPGs ("Black joined the party!" is an actual line of dialogue). It also pokes fun at Aerith.
    • And anime-series featuring toys as their main selling point, like Beyblade.
    • As well as a few jokes at Square-Enix's (the game's producer) expense, such as the character designer's obsession with zippers ("Then I wish I had more zippers, so I could tell you to zip it!") to your common emo RPG protagonist ("Must...resist...emo...urges..."), and even a joke about yaoi fangirls (which create a significant fraction of Square-Enix fanfiction).
  • Serious Sam is not-at-all serious, but a self-conscious send-up of FPS games that spread itself across other action game and film sources, and parodied Duke Nukem with particular affection.
  • Billy vs. SNAKEMAN is a parody of Anime in general, and Naruto in particular.
  • Jay's Journey is an affectionate parody of the generic Eastern RPG.
  • The in game TV Show "Dick Justice" from Max Payne 2 is an affectionate parody of the previous game.
  • Many announcers in the Backyard Sports series are Affectionate Parodies of real-life announcers.
  • The Lego games of well-known franchises such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, and Harry Potter take the franchise and go silly with it. There is a lack of drama in almost every cutscene.
  • The EarthBound games are an astonishingly good parody of the entire Eastern RPG genre, particularly Dragon Quest, as well as something of a parody of American culture.
  • The Merry Gear Solid games, particularly Merry Gear Solid 2. They're really scathing and attack with pinpoint precision all of the silliest things about an admittedly pretty silly series, like the ridiculously convoluted plots and turgid infodumps, but the sheer dedication to getting everyone In Character and replicating the Original Flavor of the Metal Gear series is what's most noticeable. The games even take stabs at morals and postmodernist fourth-wall wankery. As well as Christmas-themed Hurricanes Of Puns.
    • Metal Gear Solid 3, in typical Metal Gear fashion, is both a parody and a homage to James Bond movies. The game even starts with a typical Bond opening scene which ends in a climactic explosion that turns into the extremely bond-like intro movie. Then the actual mission of the game begins back in America where Bond Snake recieves his briefing. Back behind enemy lines he makes contact with a sovjiet double agent who turns out to be the games Bond Girl.
  • The Grox from Spore are a spoof pastiche of the Borg (with their cyborg limbs) and the the Daleks (with their war cry being "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!". However, some of their threats are less then effective. ("You will not get a holiday card this year.")
  • Fur Fighters last hub is just one big homage to James Bond, with secret volcanoes bases, stock-piles of gold, a duo female fighter force consisting of a deer and a rabbit and a small little bald man...being petted by a large white cat.
  • Indie game Indistruc2Tank's story mode is a massive parody of Metal Gear Solid, but there's a little too much genuine heart in there ("Give me...a soldier's death!") for it to be a proper skewering.
  • Violent Storm is an affectionate parody of both the whole Beat'Em Up genre and post-apocalyptic Anime like Fist of the North Star.
  • 3D Dot Game Heroes is a full-on parody of The Legend of Zelda series, among other things. Even the music sounds Zelda-ish!
  • Sonic Colors is an affectionate self-parody, making fun of Eggman's robotic skills, Sonic and Tails' approaches to being a hero, and 3D Sonic in general. In doing this, is it is a fairly pointed, but affectionate, Deconstruction.
  • Duke Nukem 3D is an affectionate parody of Doom, combining the latter's over-the-top violence with Black Humour such as turning the LAPD (or LARD as they are in the game) into literal pigs.
  • Enough Plumbers was made by someone who loves Super Mario Bros, and it shows.
  • Brutal Legend both celebrates and parodies stereotypes associated with Heavy Metal music. It was made by veteran video game designer Tim Schaffer, who has been a fan of heavy metal since he was a teenager.
  • Raving Rabbids has parodies on what their costumes are based on.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising is both an affectionate parody of Greek Mythology and video game conventions in general.
  • It's only for a moment, but Ratchet and Clank Going Commando affectionately mocked the power cell videos in the first Jak and Daxter by having Clank do Daxter-style dancing...while Ratchet looks on with a worried expression.
  • The Rance series is one of the Medieval European Fantasy although it isn't afraid to deconstruct few aspects of it along the way.
  • The wizard Blakemoor in Pathfinder: Kingmaker tells bizarre tales and is perpetually working on a grimoire but is opposed by a fiend named Siroket. This is a parody of Cleveland Blakemore, who had spent over 20 years developing Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar and his bizarre tales of working as a freelancer during the last days of SirTech Australia. Various sources throughout the game confirm that at least a few of the tales Blakemoor tells are true, including one of major plot relevance telling you that Shyka the Many helps you beat fellow archfey The Lantern King as revenge for one of pranks Blakemoor mentions, while none of Blakemoor's tales are ever refuted or put in doubt. This is an allusion to how Cleve Blakemore's tales of SirTech Australia's dysfunctional working environment are highly bizarre, but recovered documents have confirmed several of the strange details he mentioned (like art showing the bipedal penis monsters he described) were completely true. Amazingly this isn't the first time Blakemore was parodied in a video game, though "Calvin Barkmore" of Jagged Alliance 2 (released 18 years prior) is far less affectionate.

Web Animation

  • Homestar Runner features many affectionate parodies in its various cartoons, mostly of things from the creators' childhoods. A prime example would be Cheat Commandos, a parody of merchandise-driven kids' TV shows such as G.I. Joe.


Web Comics


Web Original

  • Parodies of music videos done by fans of the artist (and there are quite a lot), some examples being this and this. Although at first glance many of the Key of Awesome music videos seem to be making fun of the artists they parody, they have admitted they love most of the artists that they parody, and sometimes the artist loves them.
  • The sketch-comedy website Loading Ready Run use this trope all the time. One of their better-known parodies is CSI:CSI - Internal Investigations. Replaced the discovery of a dead body with the stealing and eating of another person's sandwich.
    • Another skit along these lines was Channel 101's "Cirque Du Soleil -- Sex Crimes Investigations", which spoofed both crime procedurals and Cirque in a goofy but fun manner.
  • The French amateur series France Five is an Affectionate Parody of Sentai and Super Sentai shows. To do so, they follow very faithfully every tropes of the Sentai genre, but transposed in France instead of Japan.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome is an Affectionate Parody of the WWE's recaps and of fanmade music videos in general.
  • Italian Spiderman is an affectionate parody of Italian B-Movies of the 1960s and 70s. The website is even complete with the fictional history of its production company, and details of how the movie was lost and recovered only in the early 2000s.
  • John Williams Is The Man is a video of a cappella quartet singing Star Wars-related lyrics over other John Williams songs, both mocking and praising the movies. (Note that, per First Installment Wins, only the original trilogy is lampooned, even though the song was made in the run-up to Revenge of the Sith, and in fact ends with a plug for that movie.)

(To the Indiana Jones theme) "Kiss a Wookiee, kick a droid, fly the Falcon! Through an as-ter-oid, till the Princess! Is annoyed! This is space ships, it's monsters, it's Star Wars, we love it!"

Western Animation

  • The Teen Titans episode "For Real" include shots of people commenting on the trials over the internet in what can only be a affectionate jab at series fans, and at shippers in particular.
  • Veggie Tales parodies things frequently, some examples being:
  • South Park's parody of Shonen anime in "Good Times With Weapons". The Gratuitous English-filled J-rock song playing in the background was even sung by Trey Parker, who is an open Japanophile.
  • The jokes on Family Guy deviate from random ridicule to Affectionate Parody, and most of them are pretty good mixtures of both. One of the most affectionate of them, however, would have to be My Drunken Irish Dad (as opposed to "The Freakin FCC" (viewer discretion advised), which is essentially a giant Take That to, well, the FCC.) Except that it turns out the FCC actually LIKED IT.
  • Futurama assembled the entire (and then-living) cast of Star Trek: The Original Series for an episode and spent 23 minutes lovingly mocking the show. Most of Futurama's writers are huge Star Trek fans, though series creator Matt Groening insists he's never seen an episode.
    • Except for James Doohan, who was replaced with Welshy. Briefly.
    • The character of Zapp Brannigan is an Affectionate Parody of Captain Kirk from Star Trek: The Original Series series. In a DVD commentary, producer David X. Cohen said his instructions to the writers when they sketched dialogue for Brannigan was, "Imagine if William Shatner actually captained the Starship Enterprise."
    • Futurama itself is an Affectionate Parody of Science Fiction in general.
    • Many people see it as a parody of Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy.
  • The Simpsons episode "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" is an Affectionate Parody of the career of The Beatles in the form of Homer's 1980s barbershop quartet, the B'Sharps, that takes the world by storm in a similar fashion to the way the Beatles did. The career of the B'Sharps mirrors that of the Beatles in almost every way, including similar controversies, the complete hysteria surrounding them and band meltdowns. The producers even persuaded George Harrison to play along, giving him the perfect closing line; as he watches the B'Sharps imitate the famous last gig on the rooftop of Apple Corps that the Beatles played, he acerbically mutters "It's Been Done." and drives off.

Bart: Did you screw up like the Beatles and say you were Bigger Than Jesus?
Homer: All the time! It was the title of our second album. (Holds up record album that looks like "Abbey Road", except the band is walking on water.)


Abridged Series

  • Avatar: The Abridged Series is, like its many brethren, at heart a fan series that isn't afraid to make friendly jabs at the source material. While much of its humour is derived by changing aspects of the original show, a lot of it still comes for exaggerating character traits and pointing out the show's plot holes and illogical-ness.
    • For example, Sokka points out some anachronisms in episode 10:

Sokka: Let me get this straight. You can invent tanks (invented 1915), jet skis (1973), and a gigantic freakin drill (20xx). But the concept of a hot air balloon (1783) eluuuuuuudes you.
The Mechanist: Umm...yes.
Sokka: I hate this world and everyone in it.

Twilight Sparkle: The best parodies are those which positively build on the original work, rather than rely on things like gratuitous cursing and unrelated pop culture jokes. There's a reason the original show caught people's interest in the first place, and paying tribute to that isn't a cop-out... IT'S COMEDY!

  • Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series proved this in Episode 50 with an immensely encouraging speech from Joey about copyright infringement but at its core showed how affectionate the series really is.

Joey: Yeah, I have a closing statement. Maybe we have committed copyright infringement. But you gotta know we've done everything in our power to support the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise! And if it weren't for us, I don't think the show would be nearly as strong as it is right now!
Johnson: And where is your evidence of such?
Joey: Look around, Johnson! There are more Yu-Gi-Oh fans now than ever before! And the more you try to stifle our creativity, the more we'll try to express our love for a show that's about more than children's card games! It's about fighting for what you believe in, and I believe in this show and its fans now more than ever! Because they believe in me!

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