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Deconstructive Parody
Cool guys don't look at explosions, no matter how many bones get broken.

"If you are in the market for easy laughs, you learn that two well-tried ways are either to trip up a cliche or take things absolutely literally."
— Terry Pratchett, "Why Gandalf Never Married"

Most parodies work in a light hearted manner, taking the basic plot of the thing they parody, and making it humorous. The giant space station may have wiped out half the Earth in the original, but in the parody only some unimportant Acceptable Targets got destroyed, and Hilarity Ensues.

And then there are these. While the parody might have made the plot silly, and light hearted, the Deconstructive Parody plays exactly like any other Deconstruction, in that everything is treated as if it were to really happen - it's just that humour is still drawn from the original story, while also serving to show what would really happen.

In a Deconstructive Parody the giant space station will still wipe out half the Earth, and while the characters will reflect on this tragedy, and take it seriously, it will still be presented humorously. Maybe all that's left are the Acceptable Targets, or perhaps the doomsday device is entirely ridiculous and non-threatening in conception, yet still works. Either way, what matters is that the plot is still treated as real, and plays out tropes as you would expect from an atypical Deconstruction.

Just to note, a bunch of Lampshade Hangings don't really count, so this may not necessarily include an Abridged Series, or some Webcomics.

Contrast Affectionate Parody, Decon-Recon Switch.

Examples from Fan Fic go on the Deconstruction Fic page.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • This Sprite commercial gleefully deconstructs and parodies the usage of advertising characters appearing in the real world alongside real people.
  • The "Go Compare" ads in the UK involved an opera singer who would appear whenever people discussed car insurance and start trilling a Crowd Song jingle, in a series of ads that quickly began to elicit howls of rage from viewers all over the UK. They then ran a "Saving the Nation" series where the same opera singer would appear to people discussing car insurance, but they would respond with the same level of terror as a real person would in that situation, to be saved by someone else attacking the singer with weapons.

    Anime and Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Deconstructive parodies of comic book superheroes are practically a dime a dozen. These days, if you count all media, it's rarer to see them played straight.

    Film 

    Literature 
  • Don Quixote is most likely the Trope Maker.
  • The Sir Apropos Of Nothing books are like this, part of the time. The other parts are a more of a straight deconstruction.
  • Several of the Discworld books, for fantasy and whatever other genres Terry Pratchett feels like.
  • Stephen Fry's The Stars' Tennis Balls (or Revenge in America) is a modern retelling of The Count of Monte-Cristo that is like this in respect to the original novel. While it's partly a parody of the original (as seen in giving the characters names that are are anagrams/plays on the original — like calling the equivalent of Mercedes Portia), it totally deconstructs the idea that the behavior Dantes engaged in when taking revenge could be seen as just in any way. It does this by making the enemies more sympathetic and the revenge Darker and Edgier, and the ultimate feeling you get is that, rather than being sympathetic or at least a Magnificent Bastard, the Dantes-equivalent is a petty and cruel Smug Snake.
  • Some literary scholars say The Fall Of The House Of Usher is a parody of Gothic Horror, what with Roderick Usher being infected with a disease that heightens his senses making him (and the reader) believe the house is scarier than it really is.
  • The Barry Trotter series has elements of this (for example, its version of Quidditch).
  • Robert A. Heinlein's Glory Road is super hilarious, but at the same time deconstructs the whole The Hero + Distressed Damsel + MacGuffin + Standard Hero Reward thing.
    • The Number Of The Beast, another Heinlein novel, does this for early 20th-Century Adventure novels. Hell, John Carter of Mars is specifically mentioned in the novel several times.
      • If "specifically mentioned several times" = "beaten like a dead horse", then yeah, that's fairly accurate. We find out fairly early on that the character Deety is actually going by her initials. Let's just say her parents really liked the Barsoom novels, and if you're familiar with them, you can probably guess what DT stands for. Oh, and her maiden name is "Burroughs". Guess what her husband Zeb Carter's middle name is. Go on, guess.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series is this for the Sci-Fi genre. The Big Good is just some guy who happens to be friends with an alien, the evil empire style characters are a bunch of horrible marksmen who's deadlist weapon is their horrendous poetry, and the Robot Buddy is a rude, paranoid, and clincally depressed Deadpan Snarker.
  • John Scalzi's book Redshirts relentlessly spoofs Star Trek: The Original Series, starting with deconstructing the entire concept of the Red Shirt by making the random ensigns who in TOS would be Red Shirts the protagonists. The tagline of the book is, "They were expendable ... until they started comparing notes." Early on Scalzi makes fun of the idea that the command crew is always on away missions by putting a navigator on the team to study a plague. When he gets infected, Scalzi pokes fun at Star Trek's habitual technobabble by telling the viewpoint character that they need a counter-bacterial, with said character wondering why they don't just call it a vaccine. And that's just the first 40 pages.
  • Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is this to conspiracy theories and literature based on them.
  • Jane Austen's earlier works Love And Freindship and Northanger Abbey parodied melodramas and gothic romances respectively.

    Live Action TV 
  • The Greatest American Hero does this with Comic Book Superheroes.
  • This was a staple of Chappelles Show.
    • "Dude's Night Out" was a more realistic beer commercial. Their activities included getting into barfights (and losing), defecating in public and having sex with transvestite prostitutes.
    • The "When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong" skits show why "gangsta" behavior is usually a bad idea.
    • Don't forget the "realistic" versions of movies like Pretty Woman.
  • Glee is this to High School Musical, when it's not being High School Musical done right.
    Rachel: There is NOTHING ironic about show choir!
  • The Good Guys does this to the idea of the Cowboy Cop and other action-movie tropes. (It was created by Matt Nix, the creator of Burn Notice.) The cop in question is an older detective — paired with a young, By-the-Book Cop — who's mentally stuck in The Eighties, unable to adjust to changed police methods or even basic fashion. The only reason he's even still on the force is that he rescued a VIP some time ago, at the cost of his partner having a nervous breakdown when he forced him to jump from one moving car to another, a typical cop-movie stunt. At the end of the first episode, they're both dressed down for the dozens of rules of police procedure they managed to break—including Armed Altruism, BTW—and he asks when they're getting their medal. And all of it is played for laughs.
    • And again with the Gut Feeling in a later episode. The feeling is correct, but the bulk of the police force thinks they were catching the bad guys. What they've actually got are the decoys(who thought they were the only bank robbers), and the real thieves see our heroes at their intended target and flee. With no evidence, Jack and Dan's boss chalks it all up to Dan's crazy rubbing off on Jack.
  • Mitchell And Webb as a couple who are sick of having James Bond show up at their parties.
    Webb: It's Moneypenny I feel sorry for. Did you see when I was going around with the voddy?
    Mitchell: What?
    Webb: Well, I said to Moneypenny, "Can you manage another finger in there?", meaning —
    Mitchell: Finger of vodka in her glass of drink.
    Webb: Exactly!
    Mitchell: Self-explanatory.
    Webb: Yeah! And then James starts rolling his eyes like he's having some sort of stroke and says, "Oh, you can always get another finger inside Moneypenny!"
    Mitchell: HE SAID WHAT?
    Webb: Literally did not know where to look.
    • Later on in this sketch he brutally attacks someone for an offhand comment and then makes a trademark quip about it. The outrage is as much about the fact that the quip wasn't very good as that he threw someone out of a window.
    • They did a similar dialogue with Scooby-Doo.
    Webb: It's a shame, because he's clearly invested so much time in teaching that dog to talk and it just can't.
    Mitchell: Whereas the dog's nephew actually talks quite well.
    Webb: A little precocious though, isn't he?
    Mitchell: Yes, but I think one can forgive that of a talking dog.
    Agent: And Suave? Good luck.
    Suave: I won't need luck.
    Agent: (beat) You're going to a casino.
    Suave: (realisation) Oh God, yes, that's right!
  • The Late Late Show: Instead of having a talk show sidekick to laugh at the host's jokes and spout the occasional Catch Phrase, the show has Geoff Peterson, a robot that laughs at the host's jokes and spouts the occasional Catch Phrase.
    Geoff: Balls!
  • Can a court case be deconstructed? If so, then The Colbert Report's Colbert SuperPAC is playing every aspect of the Citizens United case to its logical extreme for as many laughs as possible, while making a mockery of the US political system.
    • Even more brilliantly, by actually creating a political action committee, he basically conscripted Viacom and the Federal Election Commission into the joke against their will. He does things so ridiculous that they have to respond, then shows that the laws support what he just did. Maybe one of the finest real life deconstructions ever done.
  • Arguably the first season of Batman and Batman: The Movie: In the pilot, the Riddler deconstructs the Super Hero by tricking Batman into falsely arresting him so he can make a Frivolous Lawsuit for a million dollars, exposing Batman’s Secret Identity. The second episode shows the Penguin taking advantage of Batman’s Bat Deduction to commit crimes. Mr. Freeze is Dangerously Genre Savvy. Batman The Movie ends lampshading Reed Richards Is Useless when Batman refuses Robin’s idea to alter the personalities of the world leaders for the betterment of the world (and then exactly that happens). The next two seasons suffer great Seasonal Rot and were examples of Indecisive Deconstruction and Indecisive Parody.
  • The television career of popular UK comedy duo Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer revolves around deconstructive parodies of light entertainment. Reeves' career began in comedy clubs as a surreal exaggeration of the kind of versatile all-round entertainers who had flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, a la Bruce Forsyth and Des O'Connor. This continued with Vic Reeves Big Night Out, a deconstruction of television variety shows, and the sketch show The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. Shooting Stars was a deconstruction of celebrity panel games, and the duo's subsequent career has mined the same path.

    Music 
  • Tenacious D once applied the deconstructive parody approach to Author Tract music. After taking over "City Hall", the D are rulers of the world. They issue absurd decrees that show they really are the wrong sort of minds to make big, important world decisions. "From now on we'll travel in TUBES!"

    Video Games 
  • Final Fantasy V has the Idiot Hero Bartz annoying the sage Guido with him repeatedly responding to the latter's exposition with a expositionary question, which named the exact same thing Guido expositioned about. The Big Bad Exdeath also comes across as being a parody of the stereotypical Tin Tyrant Evil Overlord, as well as possibly villains from FF's genre in general, what with his bombastic tendencies and over-the top dialogue. FFV's status as a parody is arguably more apparent in the GBA version's English translation of the game than any of the proceeding translations.
  • Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent is a Deconstructive Parody of Professor Layton. Even though Tethers is in an FBI division dedicated to puzzles, he's aware that there are far more puzzles in this town than there should be. It's revealed that the gnomes he sees speak to the townsfolk in puzzles and caused a weird cult-ish group in the town.
  • Achievement Unlocked and Achievement Unlocked 2 by jmtb02 both parody the common game concept of unlocking achievements. In these games, unlocking all the achievements is the whole point of the game and there are hundreds of them for ridiculous things such as killing yourself 100 times and visiting the hint page.
  • Bulletstorm is about Space Marines who discovered they were being manipulated into killing innocent people by their corrupt superior. Upon finding out, they become Space Pirates. Ten years later, the leader and Player Character is a self-destructive alcoholic, and his rash decision to go after their old boss when he shows up get most of his crew killed and one seriously harmed. In addition to the guilt over the assassinations his team unwittingly performed, he feels guilty about harming his crew, and desperately tries to reconcile with the only surviving one, who rebuffs his advances. Said survivor, Ishi, has been turned into a cyborg by extremely painful surgery to combine him with a robot. The central gameplay gimmick of the game, The Leash, was designed by their corrupt superior to reward his men for killing people in creative ways, much like some sort of video game. The planet most of the game takes place on is a failed resort world, and is extremely colorful and varied, instead of the usual Real Is Brown. If it weren't for the swearing, fun, and Stuff Blowing Up, it would be a very dark game.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2 arguably deconstructs the entire idea of The Chosen One by featuring too many Heroes of Another Story to count. It also mocks D&D archetypes left and right (the ridiculously-over-the-top nature-loving elf, for instance), as well as badly designed areas in fan modules for NWN1 (the Orc Caves), and long and seemingly significant plot sections that end up not mattering (like the Ember trial). The script regularly veers into the openly snarky. The whole thing kinda resembles Forgotten Realms-meets-Slayers. Makes sense when you remember who the dev team is.
    • Baldur's Gate gives the player a chance to respond, in character, to a hermit who seeks out the party to drop an obscure hint in just about exactly the way most players wish they could respond.
    "Ok, I've just about had my FILL of riddle asking, quest assigning, insult throwing, pun hurling, hostage taking, iron mongering, smart arsed fools, freaks, and felons that continually test my will, mettle, strength, intelligence, and most of all, patience! If you've got a straight answer ANYWHERE in that bent little head of yours, I want to hear it pretty damn quick or I'm going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it lengthwise into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the nine hells themselves wouldn't touch it with a twenty-foot rusty halberd! Have I MADE myself perfectly CLEAR?!"
  • The Lee-Lee's Quest games give this treatment to the Super Mario Bros. 2D platforming games. Lee-Lee is actually the real bad guy who repeatedly abducts another man's girl and murders hundreds of innocents along the way, while pointlessly collecting shovels (coins) and fruits (power ups). The only mushroom in the game is poisonous, jumping into the game's only item block caves your skull in and kills you, the bird you hatch from an egg to ride jumps off a cliff when you hop on it, and stars turn your controls backwards.
  • Pokemon has PETA's satirical parody, Pokémon Black and Blue - Gotta Free 'Em All, which tries to deconstruct the whole monster-battling thing as if they were real cockfights where the Pokémon are seen as just objects. It's not so humorous, though, even if it can come across as quite funny to some people.
    • Hilariously enough, the Pokémon franchise itself had already deconstructed this exact same theme well over a year before PETA's game in the actual Pokemon Black And White games themselves, even going on to reconstruct the franchise's perceived problems in the process (not to mention using the games' Big Bad as a Take That/deconstruction of PETA-style Moral Guardians all the while).

    Webcomics 
  • Add in Spinnerette to the list of comic book deconstructions/parodies.
  • The Last Days of FOXHOUND. Sure, there's one metric fucktonne of swearing, and characters are deliberately exaggerated for laughs, but it does an excellent job of analyzing the why and how of the plot behind Metal Gear Solid. Plus, when you can make the characters' deaths in the actual game Tear Jerkers (as noted on the Tear Jerker page for Metal Gear itself), you've done something worthy of Deconstruction.
  • Living With Insanity did an arc where David wrote a story about his Mary Sue (a Rambo copy named Marty Stu) saving a bunch of orphans from Saint Hitler and his stormtroopers (as in, actual Star Wars stormtroopers) who were obsessed with anal rape. It ended with the Marty's sexiness causing a lady Nazi to give up without a fight and Hitler surrendering for no real reason. And they all lived happily ever after. Except for Hitler, who died two weeks later of AIDS.
    • Just so no one thinks it was serious, the entire arc was called "Bad Writing".
  • Overlord Bob does this with viarous fantasy cliches - bunch of adventurers invades Evil Overlord's inner sanctuary and he uses their stereotypical flaws to defeat them and transform into viarous sexy creatures. In the end the same happens to him and his rival, evil sorcerer Tim. Maid's Quest, set in the same Universe, does the same with various stereotypical evil knights.
  • Wonderella to so many superhero tropes.
  • Manly Guys Doing Manly Things to many video game tropes.
  • Garfield Minus Garfield is a deconstruction of its source material, but it's a Deconstructive Parody because it's played for laughs and is a parody of the original. Seeing as though Word Of God apparently stated that Garfield never talked in the comic, both that and this show just how much of a wreck Jon really is.

    Web Original 
  • Average Cats is an Anti-Humor deconstruction of the LOLCats meme. The humor from Average Cats comes from describing the image as it really is, with correct grammar, insisting that the macros normally seen in LOL Cats do not happen in real life. In this case, it's the deconstructive intent that's Played for Laughs.
  • Next Time On Lonny is a parody of reality shows.
  • Taking care of a dog prepares you for parenthood? Riiiight!
  • The Nostalgia Critic plays with a few tropes, but the most obvious is how he's shown how pathetic, miserable and masochistic you have to be in order to become a Caustic Critic.
  • The comedy group Dormtainment parodies rap in the video "Create A Rapper". In it, there is a hypothetical video game where you create a rapper. The four options are Thug Rapper, Hipster Rapper, Real Hip Hop Rapper, and Pop Rapper. The goal is to make the most money. The thug rapper ends up "losing" the game because he gets shot by his crew, the hipster rapper is an alcoholic and pot head and "loses" by overdosing, and the Real Hip Hop Rapper is selling CDs on a street corner and starves. The Pop Rapper is the only one that "wins" the game, by selling out.
  • The /tg/ game Drew The Lich does this for Tolkenesque fantasy, particularly D&D alignment.
  • Smosh's take on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
    • Their "If X were real" series also counts.
  • College Humor:
    • Doctor Sim is this for The Sims.
    • They did A Complaint to Mario Bros. Plumbing, which shows what Super Mario Bros would be like if its conventions were applied to real life. Mario and Luigi are plumbers, who, according to the guy making the complaint, are seen taking psychotropic mushrooms and trying to squeeze themselves down the toilet. Their personalities would fit the profile of someone with a drug addict, for instance, "Meanwhile, the shorter one [Mario] was eating, yes eating my wife's prize-winning seasonal orchids. When I pleaded with him to stop, he threatened me with some drug-fueled fantasy about spitting fire," and "I assumed he was under the delusion he could demolish bricks with his fists when he [Luigi] tried punching through my ceiling."
    • They did a similar one with "The Legend of Link's Distractions", highlighting the Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! of the character when it comes to Side Quests.
  • The Real Trailer, Fake Movie Average Party deconstructs Wild Teen Party movies by depicting the mundane things that actually go on at about 90% of teen parties.
  • Scientifically Accurate Ninja Turtles (NSFW) describes how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be if the main characters were reallistic turtles: they would be deaf, mute, filthy (real turtles carry germs, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themselves leave in sewers with a mutant rat), have unpractical hands unable to grab anything, and have a huge penis.

    Western Animation 

Unbuilt TropeMeta ConceptsDeconstruction Crossover
Cute Monster GirlIndex of Exact Trope TitlesDeliberately Monochrome
Blaxploitation ParodyParody TropesDenied Parody
Death As ComedyComedy TropesDeep Immersion Gaming
Deconstruction FicDeconstructionDeconstruction Crossover
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