History Main / StealthParody

* ''WebOriginal/HowItsActuallyMade'' is a GagDub of the documentary series ''Series/HowItsMade'', replacing the original, informative narration with a stream of inaccurate, satirical, and often disturbing "facts". Even so, series creator Huggbees does a very good impersonation of the voiceover style from the original series, and most episodes start off with a subtle mixture of real facts and plausible lies, before gradually escalating into complete nonsense. The Youtube comments below each episode are filled with people describing how long it took them to realize they weren't watching a real episode of ''How It's Made''. And of course, there was the time [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc7cLCY8Aj8 CNN got fooled, and linked to his "Bread" episode at the end of a news roundup.]] Huggbees himself doesn't think he's being particularly stealthy, and says people who mistake his show for the original are [[FailedASpotCheck just not paying attention at all]].

* ''Slate'''s [[https://slate.com/human-interest/dear-prudence "Dear Prudence" advice column]] has become notorious in some quarters for letters that present absolutely wild scenarios, often touching on hot button social justice issues ("Help! My Ex-Husband Slept With My Mom.", "Help! I Found Out My Boyfriend Did {{Blackface}} In College.", "Help! My Niece’s Email Address Is a Racist Slur."), and responses that sometimes turn into an AuthorTract. As a result, many people started suspecting that it was full of fabricated letters. In 2021, this was partly confirmed when YoungAdultLiterature novelist Bennett Madison [[https://www.gawker.com/media/dear-prudie-it-was-me-all-along admitted that]] he'd been trolling the column for years with fake letters, with several getting published and treated as serious. He finally confessed after one of the them ([[https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/05/dear-prudence-mask-coronavirus-fear-sex.html a plea from a wife]] about her husband not taking his mask off for sex even though they were both fully vaccinated against COVID-19) ended up getting lambasted on Creator/FoxNews as an example of left-wing nuttiness.

* Creator/AndrewHussie's ''Humanimals'' is a parody of that particular species of FurryComic that has superficially innocuous content but is really just a vehicle for the author's [[AuthorAppeal fetishes]]. In his universe, the furry stand-ins are freakish BodyHorror monsters and the fetishistic content is so disturbing and random as to be unignorable.

* Tommy Wiseau's SoBadItsGood film ''Film/TheRoom'' was written and filmed as a relationship melodrama, but after the movie started gaining an ironic cult following, Wiseau started [[ParodyRetcon referencing it as a]] BlackComedy. However, his hatred of any criticism towards the movie tends to negate this stance.

* The Majin Buu arc of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' is more humorous than the preceding arcs had been, but it also has the makings of someone lampooning how overblown the series had become at that point — except that someone was Creator/AkiraToriyama himself. [[note]]Keep in mind that Toriyama was originally (and to an extent, still is) a gag-manga author and that ''Dragon Ball'' itself started out as a gag-manga.[[/note]] Two characters make up ridiculously over-the-top names for ineffective attacks in a nod to the CallingYourAttacks nature of the series. One of those characters irreverently [[GenreSavvy invokes more of the series' clichés for drama]] while fighting the BigBad (long powers-ups, holding back his true power, trash talking, HeroicSecondWind, and NewPowersAsThePlotDemands), turning a long-awaited battle with the fate of the universe at stake into an outright farce. Another character gets an enormous power up just by sitting still for a long time as opposed to [[TrainingFromHell a grueling training session]]; while the character providing said power up is introduced in a series of jokes that take the piss out of some of the series' oldest clichés. The characters have become so ridiculously powerful that they can ''open holes between dimensions'' just by screaming. The BigBad initially appears as a fat, pink, childlike demon that kills people by turning them into sweets and eating them; with one character noting that [[FluffyTheTerrible his name sounds like a fart]]. He is so ridiculously overpowered that he's nigh-unkillable (at one point he recovers from being ''reduced to smoke''), has an insane amount of transformations (8 in total), and causes so much destruction that at one point almost the entire cast (along with Earth's population) is dead and the Earth itself is destroyed. The JokeCharacter ends up saving the world (momentarily) simply by telling the BigBad that killing people is wrong. The revered Super Saiyan transformation, which once required extreme circumstances to reach, is easily obtained by a couple of young bratty kids that have no clue of its importance; while the new Super Saiyan form has a very exaggerated appearance and ends up only being useful for stalling the BigBad due to failing at 2 critical moments, resulting in the BigBad being defeated through a collaborative effort instead of one guy's game-changing power up. Finally, at one point, the BigBad gets [[CurbStompBattle curb stomped]] by ''a fighting piece of candy''.

* The Majin Buu arc of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' is more humorous than the preceding arcs had been, but it also has the makings of someone lampooning how overblown the series had become at that point — except that someone was Creator/AkiraToriyama himself. [[note]]Keep in mind that Toriyama was originally (and to an extent, still is) a gag-manga author and that ''Dragon Ball'' itself started out as a gag-manga.[[/note]] Two characters make up ridiculously over-the-top names for ineffective attacks in a nod to the CallingYourAttacks nature of the series. One of those characters irreverently [[GenreSavvy invokes more of the series' clichés for drama]] while fighting the BigBad (long powers-ups, holding back his true power, trash talking, HeroicSecondWind, and NewPowersAsThePlotDemands), turning a long-awaited battle with the fate of the universe at stake into an outright farce. Another character gets an enormous power up just by sitting still for a long time as opposed to [[TrainingFromHell a grueling training session]]; while the character providing said power up is introduced in a series of jokes that take the piss out of some of the series' oldest clichés. The characters have become so ridiculously powerful that they can ''open holes between dimensions'' just by screaming. The BigBad initially appears as a fat, pink, childlike demon that kills people by turning them into sweets and eating them; with one character noting that [[FluffyTheTerrible his name sounds like a fart]]. He is so ridiculously overpowered that he's nigh-unkillable (at one point he recovers from being ''reduced to smoke''), has an insane amount of transformations (8 in total), and causes so much destruction that at one point almost the entire cast (along with Earth's population) is dead and the Earth itself is destroyed. The JokeCharacter ends up saving the world (momentarily) simply by telling the BigBad that killing people is wrong. The revered Super Saiyan transformation, which once required extreme circumstances to reach, is easily obtained by a couple of young bratty kids that have no clue of its importance; while the new Super Saiyan form has a very exaggerated appearance and ends up only being useful for stalling the BigBad due to failing at 2 critical moments, resulting in the BigBad being defeated through a collaborative effort instead of one guy obtaining a game-changing power up. Finally, at one point, the BigBad gets [[CurbStompBattle curb stomped]] by ''a fighting piece of candy''.

* The Majin Buu arc of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' is more humorous than the preceding arcs had been, but it also has the makings of someone lampooning how overblown the series had become at that point — except that someone was Creator/AkiraToriyama himself. [[note]]Keep in mind that Toriyama was originally (and to an extent, still is) a gag-manga author and that ''Dragon Ball'' itself started out as a gag-manga.[[/note]] Two characters make up ridiculously over-the-top names for ineffective attacks in a nod to the CallingYourAttacks nature of the series. One of those characters irreverently [[GenreSavvy invokes more of the series' clichés for drama]] while fighting the BigBad (long powers-ups, holding back his true power, trash talking, HeroicSecondWind, and NewPowersAsThePlotDemands), turning a long-awaited battle with the fate of the universe at stake into an outright farce. Another character gets an enormous power up just by sitting still for a long time as opposed to [[TrainingFromHell a grueling training session]]; while the character providing said power up is introduced in a series of jokes that take the piss out of some of the series' oldest clichés. The characters have become so ridiculously powerful that they can ''open holes between dimensions'' just by screaming. The BigBad initially appears as a fat, pink, childlike demon that kills people by turning them into sweets and eating them; with one character noting that [[FluffyTheTerrible his name sounds like a fart]]. He is so ridiculously overpowered that he's nigh-unkillable (at one point he recovers from being ''reduced to smoke''), has an insane amount of transformations (8 in total), and causes so much destruction that at one point almost the entire cast (along with Earth's population) is dead and the Earth itself is destroyed. The JokeCharacter ends up saving the world (momentarily) simply by telling the BigBad that killing people is wrong. The revered Super Saiyan transformation, which once required extreme circumstances to reach, is easily obtained by a couple of young bratty kids that have no clue of its importance; while the new Super Saiyan form has a very exaggerated appearance and ends up only being useful for stalling the BigBad due to failing at 2 critical moments, resulting in the BigBad being defeated through a collaborative effort rather than a game changing power-up. Finally, at one point, the BigBad gets [[CurbStompBattle curb stomped]] by ''a fighting piece of candy''.

* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Came_the_Stranger Naked Came the Stranger]]'' came out in 1969 and was meant to parody how obsessed the literary world had become with sex. There's a basic plot — a woman learns of her husband's affair and has many of her own as revenge — but each chapter is a vignette by a different author, with many different tones and styles. It was published under the pseudonym "Penelope Ashe" and became a bestseller before the truth was revealed.

* Music/ScrittiPolitti: Given the band's socialist background and [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness politics-laden debut album]], one can't make such stereotypical '80s SynthPop songs like "Perfect Way" and "Absolute" without tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek, ''right''?

* ''LightNovel/StrawberryPanic'', which loves taking shots at everything and anything related to YuriGenre works, but amusingly can still be taken as a serious piece too.

* Some WebAnimation/YouTubePoop movies fall under this, claiming to be a improved version of the godawful UsefulNotes/PhilipsCDi cutscenes. Members of the Website/YouChewPoop forums created a joke account [[https://www.youtube.com/supremebros SupremeBros]], which purposely made poops with old, played-out {{meme}}s, to parody bad poopers and see how many subscribers the channel gets.

* Music/{{Roxette}} recorded "Listen to Your Heart" as a parody of the type of power ballads popular in the mid-to-late-80s, with Per Gessle stating it was "us trying to recreate that overblown American FM-rock sound to the point where it almost becomes absurd." This was lost on critics (the [=AllMusic=] review said it was "bland" and "overproduced", even though ''that was the intention'') and the general public (who managed to get it to #1 on the Hot 100 in the US).

* The UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheory text ''Report from Iron Mountain'' is probably one of these. At least, that's what '''THEY''' ''[[KansasCityShuffle want you to think]]''. From the Author's own afterword (on page 119) "The book is, of course, a satirical hoax-" Apparently in the 1980's right wing groups were taking the report seriously, and the author had to take legal action to stop them from copying and distributing it. Left-wingers also took it seriously, insisting it HAD to be genuine. Its own introduction said so!

* The Majin Buu arc of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' is more humorous than the preceding arcs had been, but it also has the makings of someone lampooning how overblown the series had become at that point — except that someone was Creator/AkiraToriyama himself. [[note]]Keep in mind that Toriyama was originally (and to an extent, still is) a gag-manga author and that ''Dragon Ball'' itself started out as a gag-manga.[[/note]] Two characters make up ridiculously over-the-top names for ineffective attacks in a nod to the CallingYourAttacks nature of the series. One of those characters irreverently [[GenreSavvy invokes more of the series' clichés for drama]] while fighting the BigBad (long powers-ups, holding back his true power, trash talking, HeroicSecondWind, and NewPowersAsThePlotDemands), turning a long-awaited battle with the fate of the universe at stake into an outright farce. Another character gets an enormous power up just by sitting still for a long time as opposed to [[TrainingFromHell a grueling training session]]; while the character providing said power up is introduced in a series of jokes that take the piss out of some of the series' oldest clichés. The characters have become so ridiculously powerful that they can ''open holes between dimensions'' just by screaming. The BigBad initially appears as a fat, pink, childlike demon that kills people by turning them into sweets and eating them; with one character noting that [[FluffyTheTerrible his name sounds like a fart]]. He is so ridiculously overpowered that he's nigh-unkillable (at one point he recovers from being ''reduced to smoke''), has an insane amount of transformations (8 in total), and causes so much destruction that at one point almost the entire cast (along with Earth's population) is dead and the Earth itself is destroyed. The JokeCharacter ends up saving the world (momentarily) simply by telling the BigBad that killing people is wrong. The revered Super Saiyan transformation, which once required extreme circumstances to reach, is easily obtained by a couple of young bratty kids that have no clue of its importance; while the new Super Saiyan form has a very exaggerated appearance and ends up only being useful for stalling the BigBad (due to failing at 2 critical moments), resulting in the BigBad being defeated through a collaborative effort rather than a game changing power-up. Finally, at one point, the BigBad gets [[CurbStompBattle curb stomped]] by ''a fighting piece of candy''.

* "Glokenpop" by Spiderbait initially seems to be a sweet, cutesy ear worm. The song itself is actually a mockery of {{Glurge}}-y, [[MoneyDearBoy money-driven]] and repetitive {{Pop}} songs, with an UncannyValley music video to reaffirm this.

* The [[https://youtu.be/0kBTUAGAWvs&feature=player_embedded Game Fucking Fuck Fuck Fucker Fucking Fuck Fucker]] is a stealth parody of the typical swear-aholic video game reviewer made popular by WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd. The character is increasingly frightening because the longer he, his targets, and his target's fans continue to proliferate, the more obvious it becomes that his reviews are the logical conclusion everyone else is ''aspiring towards''.

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[[quoteright:350:[[WebComic/OzyAndMillie https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/satire.png]]]]

* [[https://youtu.be/MSB9SZvtP2I IrateVGNerd reviews Sonic 3 vs. Knuckles]] is a parody of WebVideo/TheIrateGamer, and thus features horrible gaming skills and general stupidity. It's not stealthy at all, but that didn't stop many from mistaking it as a genuinely bad [[WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd AVGN]] knockoff..

* [[https://youtu.be/MSB9SZvtP2I IrateVGNerd reviews Sonic 3 vs. Knuckles]] is a parody of WebVideo/TheIrateGamer, and thus feature CriticalResearchFailure, horrible gaming skills and general stupidity. It's not stealthy at all, but that didn't stop many from mistaking it as a genuinely bad [[WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd AVGN]] knockoff..

* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Came_the_Stranger Naked Came the Stranger]]'' came out in 1969 and was meant to parody how obsessed with sex the literary world had become. While there was a basic plot — a woman learns of her husband's affair and has many of her own as revenge — each chapter is a vignette by a different author and often with different tones and styles. It was published under the pseudonym "Penelope Ashe" and became a bestseller before the truth was revealed.
* Many people believe that Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli's most famous work, ''Literature/ThePrince,'' is meant to be read this way. That book is ostensibly a guidebook on how to be a successful monarch, and advocates being amoral, sneaky, and if necessary, ruthless. However, most of Machiavelli's other works were about republics and how they are the best form of government for all their people (a claim which ''The Prince'' even repeats). As such, many read ''The Prince'' as being a sarcastic "Okay, you want to be a good monarch? Then you just have to be a bad person."

* The ''Series/{{Lexx}}'' episode "Prime Ridge," about an "ideal community" obsessed with meat, guns, drugs, and lawn care, was well-received as a satire of Middle American suburbia. Creator Paul Donovan had to explain that it actually satirized ''how America satirized itself'' in the film ''Film/AmericanBeauty'' (which he called "facile," "holier-than-thou," and "a smug piece of shit.")

* Believe it or not, the original ''Comicbook/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|Mirage}}'' comic series started out as a parody of dark, edgy comics of its time, specifically ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}'' and ''ComicBook/{{Ronin}}'', but forgot it was a parody about three issues in. Although the line was pretty blurred even at the start — the only thing that makes ''TMNT'' #1 a parody, and not a regular ninja revenge story with a couple of Daredevil references, is the fact that four turtles and a rat have the leading roles. The comic's creators originally had no idea the comic would be a success, so the fact that it later became SeriousBusiness is hilarious in itself. It was also meant to parody the rampant sell-out/cash-in desires of its era's comic creators, making it more hilarious.
* There is a very good chance that the [[ComicBook/{{Doom}} Doom Comic]] ([[http://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/ here]]) falls under this category.

* ''LightNovel/DoYouLoveYourMomAndHerTwoHitMultiTargetAttacks'' is Dachima Inaka's take on LittleSisterHeroine stories, only punched up to Mother-Son IncestSubtext rather than Brother-Sister. Mamako's interactions with Masato are outright scenes you would find in any little sister story, complete with "We're related, so it's okay" justifications from Mamako.

* Aversion: Conservapedia is often accused of this, but, sadly, the founder is serious: he works for a conservative interest group headed by his mother and founded it when a student cited that Wikipedia used CE along with AD, which inspired him to create a wiki without "liberal bias". It's used to teach in his classes, in fact. How many of the ''contributors'' are serious is another matter. It is fairly widely believed that he banned [[FlockOfWolves everyone but the trolls]] when he tried to crack down on the parody edits. Wiki/RationalWiki has described this as a "[[PoesLaw Poe Paradox]]", in which people who are too far to the left of his own position (which is most of the genuinely well-intentioned editors who otherwise broadly align with his political views) are banned as being potential parodists, while the ones extreme enough to make the grade are the most likely to be trolls upholding their {{Kayfabe}}.

* ''Manga/{{Toriko}}'' is a shounen series where everything is so exaggerated and over-the-top that it's impossible to take it seriously after a while. With its 80s-inspired graphic style, overly macho main characters with HoYay-filled interactions and all the ludicrously powerful attacks and counter-attacks, it's either a throwback to simpler times or a stealth parody of shonen series like ''Hunter X Hunter'', ''Fist of the North Star'' and ''Naruto'', of the tendency to fill those series with homoerotic subtext in order to attract a peripheric fanbase, and probably also of the tendency of Japanese media to take MundaneMadeAwesome UpToEleven (''Toriko'' is set in a world which is all about food and making the perfect menu).

* [[http://blog.seiha.org/ Tenka Seiha]] runs a blog that parodies anime {{Hatedom}} by [[FanDumb anime fans]]. In a community that treats nearly every series as polarizing, the reasoning for all the hate can become [[NoTrueScotsman a little arbitrary]]. Seiha takes the common FanDumb behaviours and dials them [[UpToEleven to eleven]], which unfortunately still makes it hard to tell from [[PoesLaw the real thing]]. Keep in mind one of the [[RunningGag running gags]] is that Japanese animators are overpaid, underworked people with lavish social lives and she [[FriendlyEnemy provides a thorough screen cap gallery]] for the fans of shows she has so much disdain for. Half the summaries and gripes about the plot and gags tend to be [[BlindIdiotTranslation horribly off]], or avoids touching the writing entirely in favor of ranting about a short sight gag for the whole review. Which fits the bill for a hater who does not [[LostInTranslation know Japanese]]... except Seiha is a [[ObfuscatingStupidity game translator]]. People who [[KnowNothingKnowItAll pretend]] they know what they're hating on are a definite [[http://blog.seiha.org/2010/08/occult-academy-08-atmosphere-atmosphere-atmosphere/ target.]] There are still commentors who use her "opinions" as a basis to skip the show. (Of course, they could just be in on the joke.)

* Fredrick Crews once wrote ''The Pooh Perplex'', a satirical essay mimicking the [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotDidactic obsessive over-analyzing]] and [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical politicizing]] amongst pop culture critics, applying that analysis style to ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'' (only the original books; the Disney adaptations are dismissed as lowbrow schlock, parodying the [[SciFiGhetto bizarre elitism]] that runs rampant in literary circles). When people easily fell for the joke, Crews wrote a sequel — ''The Postmodern Pooh'' — that not only cranked the parody UpToEleven, but included citations from ''real'' academics who spouted the exact same EpilepticTrees that Crews was pulling out his ass [[PoesLaw with complete sincerity]].

* Back when ''[[http://badwebcomics.blogspot.com/ Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad]]'' was considered a big deal, Eli Parker (author of ''Webcomic/UnwindersTallComics'') created a fictional persona named Sonty Mick. The Mickster wrote his own webcomic review blog, ''[[http://webcomicssobad.blogspot.com/ These Web Comics Are So Bad]]''; his reviews were equal parts CausticCritic, ComicallyMissingThePoint, and {{Cloudcuckoolander}}. (And many of the comics that Sonty railed against were actually some of Parker's favorites.) At times it bordered on outright trolling, as he would occasionally post -- in-character as Sonty -- on webcomic messageboards or the comments section of John Solomon's blog. Though people who mistook Sonty for a real person were more likely to feel sorry for the poor fool than to be angry at him.

* [[http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/theories/lossiel.htm "The Tale of Lossiel"]] pretends to be an excerpt from an unpublished volume of the ''Literature/HistoryOfMiddleEarth''. Look past the imitation of Creator/JRRTolkien's prose and his son's editing, and note how the story cleverly avoids using the words [[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs "snow," "white", and "Disney"]].
** In fact, a good chunk of that site is just a series of Stealth Parodies (the E-Text Project and the Synopsis being a direct parody and full of misinformation, respectively). They supposedly managed to fool the [[http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/blanchett.htm Sunday Times]], but due to the dodgy nature of the rest of the site, it's uncertain if this is satire too.

* The now-defunct Play 4 Real Gaming, and its SpiritualSuccessor The Hard Drive, are gaming website parodies/satires in the same sense as Website/TheOnion, complete with ludicrous stories about the video game industry that you'd think people would realize were false (like "most gamers can't beat first level of VideoGame/{{Super Mario Bros|1}}" or "Satanists give VideoGame/PokemonXAndY 6/10 for not recruiting Satanists well enough"). And just like The Onion, a whole bunch of people in the video game media and on forums have ended up taking them seriously and using them as "news" sources, looking like right morons in the process.

** The problem with this is that it runs headfirst into PoesLaw (and not to mention UnfortunateImplications), considering the amount of cultural appropriation when it comes to black culture and music, something she didn't seem to account for. At best she ends up in the same controversial situation as Macklemore, and Lorde. And that's being accused of patronizing black people. Defenders maintain that that, too, is part of the parody, and that the cultural appropriation that she is being accused of is a rampant phenomenon in the modern pop landscape that she is parodying, ergo people accusing her of it are entirely missing the point.