History Main / IndecisiveParody

* ''Webcomic/{{Sonichu}}'' is repeatedly referred to as a parody of ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' and ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' by its writer, but there really isn't anything parodic about it -- it's at best fanfiction and at worst a ripoff. More than a few followers of the comic have questioned whether Chris actually knows what the word "parody" means.

* ''Fanfic/ShowaAndVampire'' attempts parody sometimes, like in one scene where one of the characters is in the shower and narration makes fun of the idea that big spiky anime hairdos happen naturally. Thing is, it does this while playing every Shonen Anime and Tokusatsu hero trope you can think of totally straight, and all the main characters have angsty backgrounds that are constantly getting brought up.

* ''Fanfic/ShowaAndVampire'' attempts this sometimes, like in one scene where one of the characters is in the shower and narration makes fun of the idea that big spiky anime hairdos happen naturally. It does this while playing every Shonen Anime and Tokusatsu hero trope you can think of straight, and all the main characters have angsty backgrounds that are constantly getting brought up.

* ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'' initially can't seem to decide whether Kirito's character is being PlayedStraight as a dark, tortured {{Badass}}, or PlayedForLaughs as a [[{{Chuunibyou}} fedora-tipping tryhard]] who picks bad options just because they look cool. Later arcs (and the ''SAO: Progressive'' [[SoftReboot rewrite]]/{{interquel}}) gradually stabilise his character into more of an [[AmbiguousDisorder ambiguously autistic]] BunnyEarsLawyer whom his friends tease but know they can depend on, while the AnimatedAdaptation tones down his dorky traits to play up his competence.

** People forget that it was originally a parody of earlier martial arts manga, and for good reason, considering that once it became ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' [[SeinfeldIsUnfunny it actually became the basis for every cliché in martial arts manga since.]]

* ''Manga/LoveHina'' starts mocking the harem genre hard, inserting audience surrogate Keitaro in a female dorm inhabited by character archetypes from diverse dating games, in an onsen (making ''every'' early episode a HotSpringsEpisode). It leans so far into comedy that one wonders if the romantic plot will ever resolve, but it still gets very serious when it wants to. It's worth noting that ''Love Hina'' was the TropeCodifier for most modern HaremGenre tropes, and has examples of both {{Unbuilt Trope}}s and SeinfeldIsUnfunny, so it can be hard to tell if it's parodying a genre that it redefined.

* ''Literature/TrappedInADatingSimTheWorldOfOtomeGamesIsToughForMobs'' can't quite decide if it's trying to be a straight {{Isekai}} HaremSeries or a parody of same. The series has a GenreSavvy FirstPersonSmartass for a protagonist who frequently comments on the bizarre logic or lack thereof common to the OtomeGame genre, and who unknowingly becomes the butt of the joke by sending the game plot OffTheRails and never internalizing that he's now become TheHero instead of the background character he thinks of himself as. At the same time, it ''does'' play a lot of genre conventions, particularly of male-targeted MediaTransmigration ''isekai'', very straight: Leon cheats his way forward with out-of-character knowledge of the game world and manages to get both the original game's protagonist and villainess as his girlfriends by the end of the first StoryArc. (The author is in fact [[PeripheryDemographic a male fan of the female-targeted otome genre]], which explains some of it.)

* Music/ThatPoppy is either a MindScrew conceptual art project satirizing shallow image-obsessed pop music, or a satire of shallow MindScrew conceptual art projects.

* ''Film/{{Scream 1996}}'' was marketed as a DeconstructiveParody of the [[SlasherMovie Slasher]] genre, but for all it did to point out as many traits as it could, it just ended up resembling a straight entry of the genre since the victims, while GenreSavvy, were [[DeathByGenreSavviness outwitted and killed]] by an equally Genre Savvy antagonist. Because of its popularity, ''Scream'' resurrected the slasher genre, and it's been credited with damaging the "spoof film" genre a lot more by demonstrating that one could make a funny, self-aware film that referenced genre cliches without making it an out-and-out farce. Notably, Scream would get it's own spoof film, ''Film/ScaryMovie'' (that also contained elements of ''Film/IKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer), which is far more obviously a parody than ''Scream''.

* ''Film/{{Scream 1996}}'' was marketed as a DeconstructiveParody of the [[SlasherMovie Slasher]] genre, but for all it did to point out as many traits as it could, it just ended up resembling a straight entry of the genre since the victims, while GenreSavvy, were [[DeathByGenreSavviness outwitted and killed]] by an equally Genre Savvy antagonist. Because of its popularity, ''Scream'' resurrected the slasher genre, and it's been credited with damaging the "spoof film" genre a lot more by demonstrating that one could make a funny, self-aware film that referenced genre cliches without making it an out-and-out farce. Notably, Scream would get it's own spoor film, ''Film/ScaryMovie'', which is far more obviously a parody than ''Scream''.

* ''Film/{{Scream 1996}}'' was marketed as a DeconstructiveParody of the [[SlasherMovie Slasher]] genre, but for all it did to point out as many traits as it could, it just ended up resembling a straight entry of the genre since the victims, while GenreSavvy, were [[DeathByGenreSavviness outwitted and killed]] by an equally Genre Savvy antagonist. Because of its popularity, ''Scream'' resurrected the slasher genre, and it's been credited with damaging the "spoof film" genre a lot more by demonstrating that one could make a funny, self-aware film that referenced genre cliches without making it an out-and-out farce.

* ''Literature/TrappedInADatingSimTheWorldOfOtomeGamesIsToughForMobs'' can't quite decide if it's trying to be a straight {{Isekai}} HaremSeries or a parody of same. The series has a GenreSavvy FirstPersonSmartass for a protagonist who frequently comments on the bizarre logic or lack thereof common to the OtomeGame genre, and who unknowingly becomes the butt of the joke by sending the game plot OffTheRails and never internalizing that he's now become TheHero instead of the background character he thinks of himself as. At the same time, it ''does'' play a lot of genre conventions, particularly of male-targeted ''isekai'', very straight. (The author is in fact [[PeripheryDemographic a male fan of the female-targeted otome genre]], which explains some of it.)

* ''Literature/IKissedAZombieAndILikedIt'' parodies YA ParanormalRomance, eg. ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' and its ilk. The message it sends is that it's silly to [[SpaceWhaleAesop give your life just to be with a guy]], yet Alley would have gladly done so had Doug not [[spoiler:been torn apart by feral zombies he created himself.]] [[WordOfGod From the author]] [[spoiler:-- "Nah, they would have broken up in about six months. But I didn't have time to write a book that long."]]

* ''Literature/RebornAsAVendingMachineIWanderTheDungeon'' opens with an absurd and borderline ridiculous scenario that seems to poke fun at common isekai cliches: a guy with a love of vending machines (implied to be a sexual fetish) tries to save one from falling off the back of a truck and down a cliff on a windy mountain road ''while he's riding his motorcycle'', is crushed to death by it, and is reincarnated as a sentient vending machine that can't fight, use magic, move, or do anything other than dispense ordinary goods and speak in a few pre-programmed sentences. However, the story and characters don't play around with genre conventions much or poke fun at isekai tropes often, so it comes across less as a parody of isekai and more like a standard isekai that happens to have a sentient vending machine in the middle of everything. The main character is even subject to the same CharacterShilling as any isekai protagonist, being treated as a beacon of hope that brings the surrounding community together despite ''being a vending machine''--whether or not that's intended to be a joke poking fun at the constant praise that normal isekai protagonists get or a straight example is unclear. Likewise, the residents of the StandardJapaneseFantasySetting treating bog-standard packaged food and drinks as [[{{Foodgasm}} unfathomably delicious]] may be a gag, but it's also something that many other isekai series like ''Literature/RestaurantToAnotherWorld'' have featured with no sense of irony.

How this happens can vary widely. Perhaps it is just too [[AffectionateParody affectionate]] of the genre it's a parody of that it lacks any real bite to it. Perhaps [[RedundantParody it's making jokes the genre has already been making for twenty years]]. Perhaps it's just too [[TruthInTelevision close to its target]]. It could be trying to parody [[AuthorTract something other than the most obvious subject]]. Perhaps it was actually meant to be serious, but was too comical ([[ParodyRetcon intentional or otherwise]]) to work. Perhaps the "parody" mostly consists of [[BetterThanABareBulb pointing out it's doing the stuff it's supposed to be mocking]] instead of more foundational replication. But usually this happens because the creative team [[TooManyCooksSpoilTheSoup couldn't lock in on the right tone due to a lack of unity in vision]].

* ''Manga/Zom100BucketListOfTheDead'' parodies zombie series by having the protagonist Akira ''not'' take the end of the world seriously and use it as an excuse to play around and get to do all the things he never would have in his ordinary life--and he ''thrives'' in the ZombieApocalypse setting despite having little regard for his own safety. Shizuka, the only character in the series to actually be as CrazyPrepared as your normal zombie genre protagonist, is frequently made the butt of the joke and subjected to comedic misfortune, and the series features such goofiness as Akira roleplaying as a HenshinHero and a ShoutOut to the infamous zombie shark from ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil1996'' ''in the same episode''. This is interspersed with somber and dead-serious moral lessons about the dangers of the Japanese corporate mentality, showing how Akira's past abusive job nearly [[DrivenToSuicide pushed him over the edge]] and the PTSD he and other characters still suffer from--none of which is intended to be played for laughs at all.

** Though the [[AWinnerIsYou final message]] seems to support the parody claim.

Indecisive Parodies can sometimes come from ValuesDissonance where cultural divides changes the perception of the genre, which may have never been taken seriously to begin with. Some Japanese media [[WidgetSeries has an inherently silly premise]] but [[MoodWhiplash then treats it as a dramatic story]]. Japanese audiences have more tolerance for over-the-top, whimsical silliness in fiction, while Western audiences will often assume fiction with goofy premises is too silly to be anything other than parody if it's not aimed at children.

* ''Manga/CheatSlayer'', a series that was notoriously cancelled after one chapter due to backlash, attempts to parody the shallow power fantasy common to [[TrappedInAnotherWorld isekai stories]] by portraying CaptainErsatz versions of various notable isekai protagonists as [[SmugSuper clique-ish hedonists running high on cheat-based powers]] as they [[HardWorkHardlyWorks enjoy gifts they didn't earn]] to compensate for having been nobodies in their original lives. However, the chapter also involves the main protagonist, who is himself portrayed as a complete nobody, being saved by a HotWitch who declares herself to be his mentor and tells him everything he needs to know about how to kill them, primarily for the purpose of revenge. Its satire of the typical isekai protagonist ends up with a talentless AudienceSurrogate VanillaProtagonist being plucked from his mundane life to battle utterly unsympathetic antagonists alongside a sexy lady for a self-centered motivation, making it exactly the sort of story it's trying to critique, with the only difference being the exact details of the protagonist's backstory. In addition, thanks to the sheer volume of Narou-kei isekai stories, there are also quite a few that ''do'' have reincarnators or transplated Earth folk who treat the new world as their sandbox--and more often than not those people are also the antagonists (contrast to the viewpoint transplant, who is usually one of the "good" ones).

* ''Anime/AkibaMaidWar'' has been described as a Creator/QuentinTarantino or Creator/TakashiMiike film where the gangs are replaced with {{m|eido}}aids, and it uses the ridiculous juxtaposition of cute girls in frilly outfits with [[{{Gorn}} over-the-top bloody violence]] to poke fun at both {{yakuza}} films and Creator/{{PA Works}}' trend of {{Moe}} anime revolving around cute girls working--there's no way that a maid slaughtering scores of her enemies [[SoundtrackDissonance in time to a sugary-sweet song]], complete with fountains of HighPressureBlood, could be anything other than BlackComedy. But at the same time, the show plays its protagonist Nagomi's ongoing terror about her life being at risk straight, and later on includes scenes like [[spoiler:Nerula and Ranko's deaths and Okachimachi's backstory]] that certainly seem like you're supposed to take them seriously.

Note that this is not just RedundantParody--that's when something attempting to parody accidentally copies the original work thinking they were parodying it. Compare DeniedParody, where a work that is seen as a parody is denied to be such through WordOfGod.

* One episode of ''Manga/PsychicSquad'' is essentially a parody of YuriGenre shows, but the only parts that are actually a parody are that Kaoru and Sakaki are [[LampshadeHanging lampshading everything]] and [[spoiler: that it's all actually an undercover mission on Naomi's part]]. However, almost every visual element associated with the genre is used completely straight, along with other tropes such as [[spoiler: one-sided BaitAndSwitchLesbians, with the teacher actually being attracted to Naomi.]]

* ''ComicBook/TheUnbelievableGwenpool'' bounces back and forth between being a parody of AudienceSurrogate characters and {{Meta Guy}}s, a deconstruction of such, and a straight (if not very self-aware) take. Her innate knowledge of the Marvel Universe and {{Genre Savv|y}}iness both keeps her alive as much as it punishes her for treating her new reality like a comic book, and as she develops her meta powers, the universe essentially forces her into that role to justify her existence. So you'll have one moment where she'll casually refer to a hero by their secret identity while expecting canon to make sure the events aren't permanent, another where people call her out on invoking ProtagonistCenteredMorality, and yet another where she'll go along with an issue's plot, but do some lampshading on the way.

* ''Theatre/TwistedTheUntoldStoryOfARoyalVizier'', made by the same group behind ''A Very Potter Musical'', suffers from the same problem. Ostensibly a retelling of ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' from Jafar's perspective, it opens with a straight-up parody of [[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast "Belle"]], and a good deal of the jokes in the first portion are derived from WhatHappenedToTheMouse elements from the original movie (for example, the AmusingInjuries from "One Jump" are described as horrifically painful and deadly to the guards). Aladdin is also rewritten as a sexist {{Jerkass}}, while Jasmine is a RoyalBrat with touches of TheDitz. However, the parodic elements fade away as the story progresses, focusing more on Jafar's FreudianExcuse and internal angst at trying to save the kingdom from ruin--only to occasionally delve into fourth wall-shattering jokes again. The finale, a BittersweetEnding about love, loss, and responsibility, is played totally straight, and in the end, it's clear that the overall musical is meant to be taken seriously and thus ''isn't'' a parody, but it's not a straight-up dramedy, either, resulting in this trope.

* ''Fanfic/ShowaAndVampire'' attempts this sometimes, like in one scene where one of the characters is in the shower and narration makes fun of the idea that big spiky anime hairdos happen naturally. It does this while playing every Shonen Anime and Tokusatsu hero trope you can think of totally straight, and all the main characters have angsty backgrounds that are constantly getting brought up.

* ''VideoGame/MinecraftStoryMode'' seems really uncertain as to whether it's a parody of Telltale's other adventure games, or just another one of Telltale's adventure games. There are parts where it makes fun of PressXToNotDie sequences, or of the silliness of making a linear story-focused adventure game out of a property with no story whose main appeal is limitless creativity (particularly in the first episode), but then it jumps into a "serious" story featuring character deaths and linear setpieces and QTE sequences, and plays them dead seriously. It makes one wonder, considering that their games were [[ExecutiveMeddling essentially mandated]] to [[StrictlyFormula follow the formula]] of ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDeadTelltale''.

* ''VideoGame/SonicColors'' is a DenserAndWackier installment that pokes fun at aspects of the Sonic universe, while the story revolves around an out of place plot involving [[BigBad Eggman]] imprisoning, exploiting and experimenting on an alien race. Similarly, ''VideoGame/SonicLostWorld'' focuses on a band of cartoony villains made up of various over the top stereotypes, with the story cutscenes alternating between showing their silly antics, and dealing with Eggman's latest invention slowly sucking the life force out of everyone on Earth.

* Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw often discusses this trope in ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'', as seen with the top quote. In his mind, a game that points a trope out but then plays that trope ''completely straight'' doesn't count as parody; it's just pointing out that the game plays its tropes straight and it knows so.

* This is how the ''WebVideo/GameGrumps'' feel about ''[[WesternAnimation/TheGarfieldShow The Garfield Show: Threat Of The Space Lasagna]]''. With such an utterly ludicrous premise, that is lasagna aliens (which ''of course'' look and sound as stereotypically Italian as humanly possible'') coming to Earth in an oven-themed starship and attempting to "stop Garfield from eating their Earth brethren" by hypnotizing mice to do their dirty work, they feel there's no way the people who made it don't get how silly it is and aren't making fun of the show. However, the game itself doesn't seem even remotely self-aware and consists of a collection of very mundane "cat vs mice" minigames that play like your most averagely mediocre UsefulNotes/{{Shovelware}} minigame compilation, and are in fact so unrelated to the alien plot that you could remove it completely and the games would still make sense since they all only involve mice either stealing food or pestering the cat. So in the end they're left utterly baffled by the tone of the game and can't figure out if it was meant to be a parody or not.

** The writer often used Cleveland to lampoon the way American culture treats black people, except their ''own'' main black protagonist is easily the least developed of Peter's group and most of the jokes centered around him and his family rely on their race (and, of course, he was voiced by a white actor for a very long time).

* The ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama'' series started out as an animated parody of RealityTV. The later focus on shipping and other such plot tumors essentially made it a pre-scripted (read: slightly more scripted than usual) reality show that happens to be animated.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Velma}}'' mocks and lampoons multiple of the tropes associated with the Scooby-Doo franchise, teen drama series and "woke" reboots... the issue being that it seemingly has no problem playing those tropes straight at the end of it, such as playing Velma and Daphne's revamped relationship completely straight, and the naked shower scene, which despite the show lampshading how unnecessary it is, still exists.

* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' likes to try its hand at self-parody, only to then use the self-parody to [[BetterThanABareBulb continue doing what it was already doing.]] When it's not going for parody, some of the characters that originally came from parodies tend to get treated seriously. Much of this owes to the fact that it's part of a franchise that turned UsefulNotes/ElizabethBathory into a [[HalfHumanHybrid half-dragon]] pop idol with a tragic backstory in complete seriousness; it's very difficult to parody the franchise without [[RedundantParody creating something it would actually do]].

** The world Heroine X came from, a sci-fi setting where ''everyone'' was a Servant due to having Saint Graphs inside them, was a parody of the increased focus on the Servants in other ''Fate'' series. Not only did the events focusing on her give a legitimate backstory to the place, but one of the sequel events introduced another Servant who was treated just as semi-seriously.
** Okita and Nobunaga were originally created as gag characters for a completely silly manga (definitively male historical figures [[HistoricalGenderFlip being turned into]] silly catchphrase-spouting waifus, one of whom is an IdenticalStranger to Saber because [[OnlySixFaces her artist got lazy]]). They ended up being [[PoesLaw so indistinguishable from]] non-gag efforts like Nero (a definitively male historical figure who was turned into a silly catchphrase-spouting waifu, who is an Identical Stranger to Saber to [[ContrastingSequelMainCharacter intentionally contrast their personalities]]) that they were added into the game unchanged, and have since participated in fairly serious storylines.

-> ''"VideoGame/DeathSpank is that particular breed of parody that basically just does all the same things as the kind of thing it's parodying, but occasionally points to itself and goes: "Hey, everybody, look!" (Then the Wayans brothers make a parody of ''that'', full of bodily fluids and pop culture references, and the collective IQ of the general public drops another precious notch.)"''

* ''{{Franchise/Fate|Series}}'':
** ''KOHA-ACE'' stars characters that intentionally invoke and parody common Servant types, and creates Servants that would either be {{Joke Character}}s (like Caster) or outright impossible to exist naturally (like [[FusionDance Majin Saber]]). Its main heroines alone are foul-mouthed cute girl {{Historical Gender Flip}}s; one of them is a Saberface just because, and she is both aware and angry about it. The characters spend their days getting on each others' nerves instead of doing anything cool, living with NoFourthWall, and crossing over with other Type-Moon characters (Kohaku from ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}'' being a favorite). Even its attempts at a coherent story arc are riddled with in-jokes and comedy, and some parts are called out in-universe as only getting serious in case games like ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' canonize them -- yet the characters are treated sincerely enough to get completely serious elaborations,[[note]]everything from Okita's IncurableCoughOfDeath and exuberance to Nobunaga's wacky inventiveness and musket obsession is given a logic behind it consistent with prior worldbuilding, which suggests a real attempt to make them work outside of gags or parodies[[/note]] and its most famous story arc got a hotblooded, dramatic, very-much-straightforward-and-not-parodic-at-all remake in ''Webcomic/FateTypeRedline''.

* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' likes to try its hand at self-parody, only to then use the self-parody to [[BetterThanABareBulb continue doing what it was already doing.]] When it's not going for parody, some of the characters that originally came from parodies tend to get treated seriously. Much of this owes to the fact that it's part of a franchise that turned Elizabeth Bathory into a [[HalfHumanHybrid half-dragon]] pop idol with a tragic backstory in complete seriousness; it's very difficult to parody the franchise without [[RedundantParody creating something it would actually do]].

* Music/BrokenCYDE seem very indecisive about whether they're a StealthParody or DoingItForTheArt.

* ''Comicbook/SavageDragon'': The comic tends to lampoon quite a few superhero tropes, from the NinetiesAntiHero type that [[Creator/ImageComics Image]] was partly responsible for popularizing, to the generally ridiculous nature of C-list supervillains (Dung and his diarrhea-cannons, for example) — but often-times it's hard to tell whether Larsen is making fun of these tropes or is more-or-less trying to tell a serious story and just has a [[RefugeInAudacity really weird sense of humor]].

* ''FanFic/ShowaAndVampire'' attempts this sometimes, like in one scene where one of the characters is in the shower and narration makes fun of the idea that big spiky anime hairdos happen naturally. It does this while playing every Shonen Anime and Tokusatsu hero trope you can think of totally straight, and all the main characters have angsty backgrounds that are constantly getting brought up.

* No one is quite sure whether ''Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' is a ''humorous'' science fiction series or a ''parody'' of science fiction series.

* ''VideoGame/MinecraftStoryMode'' seems really uncertain as to whether it's a parody of Telltale's other adventure games, or just another one of Telltale's adventure games. There are parts where it makes fun of PressXToNotDie sequences, or of the silliness of making a linear story-focused adventure game out of a property with no story whose main appeal is limitless creativity (particularly in the first episode), but then it jumps into a "serious" story featuring character deaths and linear setpieces and QTE sequences, and plays them dead seriously. It makes one wonder, considering that their games were [[ExecutiveMeddling essentially mandated]] to [[StrictlyFormula follow the formula]] of ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead''.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

** The Ginyu Force stand as a particular example. Everything about them is meant as a parody of sentai tropes: [[AgentPeacock their flamboyant nature]], tendency to make [[SuperSentaiStance random poses in the middle of combat]], [[CasualDangerDialogue incredibly flippant handling of fights]], and habit of [[CallingYourAttacks giving every attack a stupid name]] that often [[TalkingIsAFreeAction end up so long to say that they get punched midsentence]]. The thing is, every single one of these tropes (flamboyance, characters striking poses in combat, treating fights like a joke, giving generic attacks stupid overlong names and never being interrupted) are all things ''Dragon Ball'' has featured before with no sense of irony. Really, the Ginyu Force is only a slight notch above the rest of the series, with the main difference just being the lampshading of it.

-->'''[[AudienceSurrogate Cindy]]:''' ''[trying to avoid a motel-wrecking fist fight]'' [[TakeThatUs I can't believe this macho bullshit!]] [[LampshadeHanging These guys eat too much red meat!]]

* ''Film/Crybaby'' : The film spoofs regular teen movies effectively in many scenes, but some fans feel it also plays some stock teen movie cliches (like the drag race) straight, and that it can't quite commit to being either campy or edgy.