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alt title(s): Affectionate Parodies 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 this.
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.
This sort of thing is often popular with fans — and occasionally stars — of the original.
Many a comedy Fan Fic 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
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Anime and Manga
- Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series; Trope Namer of The Abridged Series.
- Bobobo parodies all Anime, particularly Fist Of The North Star, Dragon Ball Z, and Yu-Gi-Oh!
- Slayers is a good-natured send-up of Heroic Fantasy novels, games, and anime.
- Likewise, Ouran High School Host Club has fun with parodying a lot of clichés associated with romance and high school comedies, even though the series itself falls under both banners (and the manga artist herself had written things like it in the past until Ouran became her breakout hit).
- The anime has somewhat different characterizations and a very different plotline, but it still manages to be both a hilarious reverse harem parody and gender farce and a high-quality reverse harem series in its own right.
- The Show Within A Show of Martian Successor Nadesico, Gekiganger 3, is a homage to and parody of classic Super Robot anime such as Getter Robo, and also serves as an ironic counterpoint to the main show's plot! Impressive.
- Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman is an Affectionate Parody of the Sentai genre.
- The first Ganbare Goemon OVA sees Goemon and Ebisumaru race to rescue Omitsu from a castle, while being thrown into spoof levels of Grandia, Castlevania and Twinbee.
- Project A Ko was a sendup of just about everything in anime between 1976 and 1986.
- One Piece is a fairly standard Shonen anime with a focus on humor that occasionally leans toward parody. The most obvious, though, is cowardly hero Usopp's disguise of "Sogeking", a clear parody of live-action seinen series'. He even has a theme song, complete with 60's style Japanese Live-action special effects and the appearance of being largely filmed inside a quarry.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is arguably as much an Affectionate Parody as it is a Reconstruction of the super robot genre; the heroes are able to win, for example, on pure determination alone, literally (and I do mean literally as the series explains halfway through the series) and it's otherwise just so over the top as to be awesome even when it's not trying.
- With Shinkon Gattai Godannar's hot-blooded retro theme song, ridiculous Voltron-esque multinational team, attack-yelling and absurd robot design, it's highly unlikely the creators were being serious here.
- Sumomomo Momomo, the manga slightly moreso than the anime, is an affectionate parody of both martial arts anime and Unwanted Harem romantic comedies.
- Being a very popular show, Dragon Ball Z has been parodied in animes and mangas. The Super Saiyan Transformation and Kamahame Wave, the show's most recognizable trademarks, are always used. It even shows up in the shojo genre: FU-GI-SA-KI-HAAAA!
- Macross was originally going to be a sendup of the mecha anime genre, back in the day when a city-sized spacecraft shifting to robot mode actually counted as Beyond The Impossible. However, it proved so popular that the creators wound up playing it straight to a much greater degree... and thus setting up a whole new generation of parodies!
- Surprisingly enough for such a... well, dark show, Darker Than Black has an Affectionate Parody of the entire Private Detective genre in the form of the Plucky Comic Relief duo of Gai Kurosawa and his Sassy Secretary Kiko.
Comics
- While Alan Moore's Miracleman and Watchmen were dark deconstructions of the Super Hero 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.
- 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 Spectactular Spider-Ham, an anthropomorphic animal verion of the Marvel Universe. Alternate reality storylines, such as the ones in Excalibur, also included humorous parodies.
- Runaways uses this as well, especially with Victor Mancha, who is programed 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.
Fan Works
- The Abridged Series parodies often openly deride the shows' oversights as well as the kind of people who watch the shows... even though they are made by the kind of people who watch the shows.
Films
- 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 The Wesley); even Patrick Stewart loved it.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 using actual sets and props from the original 30's film.
- They didn't use actual sets as they recreated 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.
- Shame on you for not including Blazing Saddles.
- In that case, just list anything by Mel Brooks.
- Dracula: Dead And Loving It.
- 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.
- In the same vein, Dont 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 that this troper cries Manly Tears every bit as much as he laughs 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, while simultaneously being a remake of another horror movie that was itself an affectionate parody of Fifties horror movies.
- Grease was an Affectionate Parody of 1950s teen musicals, although most people don't seem to realize this.
- 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 Po P!'s big hit "Pop! Goes My Heart" — to the present day, with the Britney / Christina Aquilera-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.
- 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 scifi 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.
- 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.
- Rustler's 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 Five
- High School High and Fatal Instinct which parodied "Teacher" and "Femme Fatale" flicks, respectively.
- Walk Hard parodies musical biopics.
- Top Secret! & Hot Shots parody action flicks about World War Two and The Vietnam War, respectively.
- 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.
- The Hebrew Hammer parodies Blaxploitation movies.
- As does I'm Gonna Get You Sucka.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- The Zvirmalrioln is an affectionate parody of The Silmarillion. Kinda like Bored of the Rings, except it's funny and smart.
- Very early Discworld novels were an affectionate parody of fantasy clichés (and some specific settings). Elements of this still occur in the books, but are no longer the focus.
- Excepting Making Money, you'd be hard-pressed to find a Discworld novel that doesn't parody something, and even that book gets a few laughs out of the history of finance in Real Life.
- Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's first novel, was an affectionate parody of gothic romances.
- Lisa Papademetriou's The Wizard, the Witch, and Two Girls from Jersey is an affectionate parody of childrens/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, 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 40000 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.
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 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. 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, each one parodying a different decade of Doctor Who (the 1990s one in particular is pure Eighth Doctor TV Movie).
- 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.
- Supernatural mocks the horror genre in "Hollywood Babylon", with some Lampshade Hanging thrown in. Recently, 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."
- 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.
- Power Rangers Ninja Storm has tons of fun with this trope as it lampoons PR's own standards. Lothor, the big bad, spouts lines like "This is the most fun I've had all season!," "What? You didn't think he was going to get smaller!" (to the camera after making a monster grow) and the gratuitous Lampshade Hanging "They blow him up, we make him big, they blow it up again!"
- Meanwhile, Super Sentai had Gekisou Sentai Carranger, a super-light-hearted series with ridiculous monsters and a team of Idiot Heroes, which still managed to have a good storyline. It helped revitalize the franchise. Its American counterpart, Power Rangers Turbo, however, tried to make something serious out of it and failed miserably.
- Interestingly, Power Rangers RPM is doing much the same thing and making it work pretty well. 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 everytime we morph" and of course "is that really spandex?"
- 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.
- 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 Affection Parody of the show and people who believe in aliens. Later Millenium would do the same with Jose Chung's The Doomsday Defense.
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.
- This troper thinks 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.
- 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.
- Weird Al asks before he uses someone's song. He doesn't have to ask to pastiche a 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 Black or White, which Jackson said was too serious a message.
- 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.
- 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.
- Both Bad News and Spinal Tap are affectionate parodies of Heavy Metal Music bands.
- Likewise The Rutles, who spoof The Beatles.
- 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. Originaly 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 and the emphasys on RPG/Death imagery in clips they ended becoming quite sucessful, as a real Heavy Metal band, albeit while maintaining the jokes. They've even released an album and opened shows for 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.
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.
- This troper, who has played through Final Fantasy VII, was rather amused by the articles on Sephiroth and Aeris's death:
He [Sephiroth] went to Sector 6 Community College, where he met his later band mate, Bill D. "President" Shinra. He dropped out after flunking basic calculus and airshipology and formed his first band, MaTeRiA.
Upon reviewing cut scenes (much like security tapes) of the area, investigators found that there were at least five individuals at the scene of the crime. It was conclusive that Sephiroth had murdered Aeris Gainsborough, and that Cloud Strife had failed to perform first aid and attempted to hide the body in the pool.
- Pokebattles is a major affectional parody site. It parodies Pokémon, with a battle system identical to Pokemon Red. They always say used before attacks and multiple actions. They parody multiple other things including Star Wats, Luke is a character. It's hilarious and interesting. Doompuff, the evil rabid jigglypuff of doom, is The Juggernaut. A link to Red Version is [1].
- 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 MST 3 K doesn't qualify, RiffTrax 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 Isuldor'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. For example, does this reminds you of... anything?
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).
Close Professional Wrestling
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.
Tabletop Games
- The Pokéthulhu roleplaying game is an arguably affectionate but very tongue in cheek cross-parody of, guess what, Pokémon and the Cthulhu Mythos.
- Depending on why 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.
Theatre
- 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 Noël Coward-like character in The Man Who Came To Dinner, was written by Noël Coward's long-time friend Cole Porter (who even signed his name on the song's manuscript as "Noël 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 it's subject matter, Man Of La Mancha is more of an affectionate parody.
Video Games
- Squad-level tactical combat games Freedom Force and Freedom Force vs. the 3rd Reich are affectionate parodies of Silver Age comic books.
- I think they qualify more as Homage than parody.
- 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 Mad World, 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.
- 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.
- The Disgaea series frequently parodies anime and its cliches. Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! is a parody himself.
- 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 RP Gs ("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.
- Final Fantasy V is generally less serious than other Final Fantasy games, especially with an Idiot Hero and a hammy Ensemble Darkhorse, but the plot can be summarized as It Got Worse. More of the second type.
- 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 (coming soon) Harry Potter take the franchise and go silly with it. There is a lack of drama in almost every cutscene.
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 GI Joe.
- You can tell the HISHE version] of Transformers was made by someone who actually loves Transformers.
Web Comics
- Buttlord GT is a very harsh parody of all the most stupid aspects of Dragon Ball. The laser-precise humour, however, marks the author as someone who obviously watches it religiously.
- Kristofer Straub's Checkerboard Nightmare was a lovingly critical exploration of webcomics. His current project, Starslip Crisis, embraces and skewers sci-fi tropes in equal measure.
- 8-Bit Theater is an affectionate parody of console (specially Final Fantasy I) and table top RPG's (the fantasy genre in general) that also contains an epic story line.
- Darths And Droids, of both Star Wars and Tabletop Games.
- DM Of The Rings used screencaps from the movie to show it as a tabletop RPG — complete with players whining about the DM's railroading and loquaciousness.
- The Order of the Stick afectionately parodies the third edition of Dungeons and Dragons, as well as many Fantasy tropes.
- Sluggy Freelance does this quite a bit. Star Trek and Alien in "The Sci-Fi Adventure", Voltron and Star Wars in "GOFOTRON Champion of the Cosmos", World Of Warcraft and other MMORPGs in "Years of Yarncraft", Harry Potter in the "Torg Potter" stories.
- Sluggy Freelance began the Torg Potter stories as parodies (to the obvious). As they continued only out of obligation to fan expectations, they became less affectionate and less faithful to their sources.
- The Noob is a very insightful parody of MMORPGs and the people that play them.
- Super Megatopia is a cheesecake laiden parody of every superhero in existence. Highlights include Ferret Man (a combination expy of Batman and The Punisher — Oh Crap!), Buxom Gal (an expy of Power Girl, right down to the costume, except Buxom Gal's powers are tied to her ever increasing bust size), Avatar (she's a god/dess! She doesn't know which one she is at any given time, but she has alien technology to help her prove her point).
- In addition, "Crushed: The Doomed Kitty Adventures" parodies sword-and-sorcery fantasy games in general, but on-line RPG gaming in particular (such as the Temple of Infinite Lives and Crushed having to trek back to her body to retrieve her gear).
- Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman, is an affectionate parody of Half Life 2, as the title suggests.
- Problem Sleuth does double duty, poking fun at the convoluted puzzles of the Adventure Game and the convoluted plotlines and combat abilities of fantasy RPGs.
- "Radiant Dumb" is an affectionate parody of Fire Emblem and its various game mechanics. Occasionally, it pokes fun at the story of Radiant Dawn and Path of Radiance.
- Doing these was the whole point of the original run of Zortic, prior to its Cosmic Retcon.
- Girl Genius parodies pulp 1940s serials, old-school science fiction, and every mad scientist trope in the book (the main characters all suffer from a trait which causes both madness and scientific genius ... or rather, they enjoy every minute of it.)
- In Anime News Network's Anime News Nina, the Show Within A Show Ultimate Mop Daisuke DX is an affectionate parody to the Shonen genre (but especially Naruto).
Web Original
- 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 Acceptable TV's "Cirque du Soleil - Sex Crimes Investigations", which is one of the best Cirque sendups this fan's ever seen.
- 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 Its 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. Better Than It Sounds.
(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!"
- A Very Potter Musical is a full-length musical parody of the Harry Potter books and movies. The sheer amount of effort that must have gone into its production pretty much guarantees that the writers, cast, and crew are all fans.
- MS Paint Adventures parodies most RPG and choose your own adventure tropes. Special mentions to Problem Slueth's sheer scale of its Limit Breaks and Homestuck's notorious Inventory Puzzles.
- Radio Free Cybertron does this in their "The Transformers: The Movie" Parody, which sends up the classic 1986 animated film.
- The Legend Of Neil is a parody of The Legend Of Zelda in specific, of video games in general and of the sub genre of animated series where someone from the "real world" gets trapped inside a video game.
Western Animation
- South Park's parody of shonen anime in "Good Times With Weapons". The Gratuitous English-filled J-pop 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 apposed to The Freakin FCC (viewer discretion advised), which is essentially a giant Take That to, well, the FCC)
- 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 Kirk from the original Star Trek 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.
- 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 "Its 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.)
- Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law lovingly parodies of all the old Hanna Barbara cartoons.
- The Venture Brothers is an Affectionate Parody of The Fifties Sit Coms; The Sixties Adventure Cartoons, particuarly Jonny Quest; & James Bond.
- Avatar The Last Airbender contains a wonderful parody of professional wrestling in the episode "The Blind Bandit." "The Boulder has conflicted feelings about fighting a young, blind girl!"
- The Boulder was actually voiced by former WWF wrestler Mick Foley, as well as being a visual parody of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
- Not to mention "The Ember Island Players". How can you not love a show that parodies itself?
- The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy is fond of this trope. They parody all the time and end up not making it look worse. A particuary affectionate one was Hokey Monsters, a Pokémon parody, where they make it a card game and turn them to life. They pick at a few dumb aspects of it but in the end it said Pokemon was still awsome. They've done many many others like Mary Poppins and Fantasia's Bald Mountain.
- Both Shin Chan's and Robot Chicken's parodies of Star Wars demonstrated more knowledge of and reverence for the originals than most, including character names and terms that aren't mentioned in the movies.
- Kim Possible seems to have been designed from the outset to have "affectionate parody of spy movie conventions and superheroes" as part of it's central concept.
- Kim Possible did an affectionate parody of the 60's Batman franchise with The Fearless Ferret, whose actor, a Timothy North (voiced by Adam West) ended up being a space-case who thought the TV show was real. They also used the episode to poke fun at the up-side down kiss from Spider-Man.
- The episode contained another level of affectionate parody, since it featured Ron as the young successor to a costumed legacy, with the original hero giving him constant advice and reprimands via radio. Ron's voice actor, Will Friedle, also voiced Terry McGinniss on Batman Beyond.
- Nor was this Adam West's first go-round with such things, as on the original animated Batman series, he voiced the actor who played The Grey Ghost, a somewhat campy and cliched costumed vigilante hero. Other appearances of the character implied that The Grey Ghost may have shared some of West's Large Ham tendencies.
- Yin Yang Yo had an entire episode that was an Affectionate Parody of classic Looney Tunes shorts.
- The entirety of Megas XLR is an Affectionate Parody of the Humongous Mecha genre in every possible way. But it doesn't stop there, folks.
- All this time, and no mention of Metalocalypse, the parody of death metal whose soundtrack album made those in the same genre it parodies stop and take notes? It helps that the creator is a huge fan of the music, even including other parodies of the genre in his previous show, Home Movies.
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