This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Drop Dead Gorgias: What about celebrities who play fictionalized versions of themselves? For example, Larry David plays a character with his name on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and it is obviously supposed to represent his real self, but many facts about his life, such as his wife's name are different from real life, and of course, the events are scripted. The same is true for Fat Actress, Unscripted, and characters like Mandy Moore on Entourage. Are these Danzas, or their own trope?
Looney Toons: I've been considering them Danzas, but you may be right that they really constitute a separate trope. If we do branch it off, I'd like to suggest Me But Not Me or maybe The Zenjiro (for the TV star who plays himself in the anime Kodomo No Omocha) as possible names.
Gus: Just throwing it out there that literature written about true events made "readable" is said to be "fictionalised", which made me think of Bio Fiction or Bio Fictional (mushing-up Biographical Fiction) as a possibility here.
Drop Dead Gorgias: What about As Himself, as it would appear in classic credits?
I'd call it The Seinfeld, unless that's already taken.
Ununnilium: I like As Himself. Simple, to the point, and most people will grok it at first sight.
Eric DVH: I notice a number of examples like Mister Rogers and Stephen Colbert that involve "characters" which aren't really supposed to be different from the person's public persona within the show. By that definition, people like Burns & Allen would count.
Looney Toons: Sorry about the Britcom entry; I thought it had been deleted out of sheer cussedness or because someone didn't like it. I've seen a few too many of that kind of edit recently and jumped to a conclusion.
Stm177: The Teevee.org link is dead
Sikon: I was under the impression that Nabeshin is Shinichi Watanabe; they are a single character, not two different ones with the same model and voice. I thought Puni Puni Poemi made it clear when Poemi, Nabeshin's adopted daughter, had the surname Watanabe and addressed him as "Director".
- A slightly more subtle Danza is Garry Shandling as Larry Sanders in The Larry Sanders Show, played by Garry Shandling in another self-referential turn as a late-night talk-show host.
Bein Sane: ...huh?
- Isn't that moment in Fifth Element a subversion of this, when Ian Holm says, "Mr. Willis" and is corrected to "Dallas", by Bruce Willis?
I had to get rid of this:
- In the Russian crime films Brother and Brother 2, directed by Sergey Bodrov Sr., actor Sergey Bodrov Jr. plays protagonist Danila Bodrov. At least the brother that the first title refers to (the second film is about the brothers aiding a dead friend's brother) is played by a non-Bodrov. Apparently, old man Bodrov really wanted to make Junior famous, although, in retrospect, the kid had charisma aplenty to make it big without the help.
since Sergey Bodrov Jr.'s character is actually called Danila Bagrov. Also, the father-son team didn't work on this film together, the director was Aleksey Balabanov. But as a consolation I finally got around to making an article for Brother.
