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In the Style of

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/devoweirdal.png
Devo's (top) style spoofed by "Weird Al" Yankovic (bottom)
Taking a work that's a member of a certain genre, and doing it just the same, except as a different genre. For example, taking a rap song and getting a barbershop quartet to sing it; or showing a comedy-adventure from the Sympathetic P.O.V. of the villain, making it a tragic drama; or just taking a page from a famous novel and adding in the stylistic quirks of a completely different writer.

Can be applied to any form of art that can be categorized.

Recycled In Space can be this, but usually isn't. Generally changes the meaning. For music, contrast with Suspiciously Similar Song, where the intention is to resemble the original as closely as possible while still avoiding copyright-breaking. This is one form of X Meets Y. Don't confuse it with Pastiche, which is when a genre is imitated as closely as possible by a new work. Advertising by Association is when this is openly invoked as a selling point; sometimes it is an example and sometimes not (in those cases, it's another work from the same creator, with another style), but the executives surely want you to think it is.

Compare Homage when an original work makes a deliberate tribute to another work. See also Pastiche and Musical Pastiche.

Example subpages:

Other examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Pluto is Astro Boy in the style of Monster. Yes, really. And, if that weren't enough, it's actually really good.
  • An omake chapter of the Sgt. Frog manga shows the series as a chapter of Monster. The Keronians are somehow even sillier-looking when drawn in the style of Naoki Urasawa.
  • The style of the character designs and angsty, surreal nature of the plot of Shamanic Princess encourages comparisons to CLAMP. In fact, the Central Park Media release of the series actively invoked such comparisons, even though CLAMP had nothing to do with Shamanic Princess. However, the character designer had previously worked on Magic Knight Rayearth.
  • La Maison en Petits Cubes is a Japanese anime that looks nothing like Japanese anime. It is done in a hand-drawn style that evokes French animation (note the French-language international title).
  • Kaguya-sama: Love Is War is a high school romantic comedy in the style of Death Note.

    Art 

    Comic Books 

    Comic Strips 
  • The Great Comic Strip Switcheroo of April 1, 1997, was this. Forty-six nationally syndicated comic strip artists traded strips for a day, so that you had, for example, Bill Keane doing Dilbert in his own style and Scott Adams doing the same for The Family Circus.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • A hybrid film-music example appears in one scene of Amadeus, in which Mozart, as party entertainment, plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in the styles of various composers suggested by onlookers, with a humiliating Take That! at Salieri.
    • Victor Borge must have seen that play.
    • Mozart did, in fact, write a series of piano variations on the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," though the words we know hadn't been written yet. Don't remember if they're meant to be imitating specific composers, or just different musical styles.
      • Just a standard set of Mozart variations on a theme. "Standard" for Mozart being "Masterwork" for anyone else, but there you have it.
      • It did have lyrics, but different ones. It's a Christmas song in German.
  • At the end of The Hangover, a soft rock band at a wedding does a cover of 50 Cent's "Candy Shop."
  • The surrealist Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There uses five actors (and one actress) to portray different characters inspired by Dylan's ever-changing persona, each of whom is in a separate storyline shot in a different, sometimes self-consciously imitative style:
  • Does anyone notice that the second opening song that accompanies "Bella Notte" in the intro to Lady and the Tramp ("Peace on Earth") sounds like a harmony for "Silent Night" by Joseph Mohr and Franz Xaver Gruber?
  • In the background of a bar scene in Blood Simple, the Coen Brothers' debut film, you can hear a country version of the theme music from Chariots of Fire.
  • The telethon at the end of The Muppets (2011) includes a barbershop quartet (comprising Sam, Rowlf, Link Hogthrob and Beaker) performing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
  • A now defunct website advertising a proposed Bananaman film featured a full-orchestral version of the cartoon's theme tune in the style of John Williams's Superman theme.
  • Based on its subject matter and cinematography style, reviews have noted how Jojo Rabbit seems to be Taika Waititi making a Mel Brooks movie by way of Wes Anderson.

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 
  • Bill Bailey delivered a (since removed from YouTube) classic pub gag in the style of Geoffrey Chaucer.
  • Doctor Who:
  • Glee occasionally does this with some of their covers.
    • Britney Spears gets a few of these, most notably "U Drive Me Crazy" as a heartfelt love ballad (mashed together with "Crazy"), "3" as an acoustic sultry love song, and "Toxic" as a Bob Fosse-like routine.
    • "The Rain in Spain" in the style of punk rock.
    • "No Scrubs" in the style of a boy band.
    • Not to mention the many a cappella covers done by the Warblers.
    • Most infamously, they did a cover of "Baby Got Back" that was identical to Jonathan Coulton's acoustic folk-rock remake without crediting him for the arrangement (he wasn't too pleased about that).
  • Not exactly this, but Jeopardy! occasionally has a category of song lyrics, which are read in regular speaking fashion by Alex Trebek or Johnny Gilbert. It's harder than you'd think.
  • Kamen Rider Den-O's "Double-Action" has seven different versions, each in a different musical style; Eurobeat, ska, enka, hip-hop, pop music, death rock, piano instrumental, Arabian-sounding and a remix for the Reunion Show. One can only wonder what "Double-Action Plat Form" might have been like...
    • Not to mention the remixes of the show's opening "Climax Jump" centered around each of the Imagin — Momotaros gets rock, Urataros gets ska, Kintaros gets enka, and Ryutaros gets hip-hop, the last of which is actually used in show when Ryuta is busting moves.
  • Late Night with Jimmy Fallon features several genre-shifted covers done by Fallon himself:
  • The current Let's Make a Deal has done a similar sketch as a game called "Jukebox", where the contestant picks from a selection of CDs, and Wayne Brady and Jonathan Mangum improvise a song about a hidden prize in the style of a musician or genre listed on the CD.
  • Person of Interest: the episode "If-Then-Else" used two pieces of electronic music prominently, "Fortune Days" by The Glitch Mob, and "If-Then-Else" by regular composer Ramin Djawadi, an arrangement of several of the show's established character themes In the Style of The Glitch Mob.
  • In early seasons of Saturday Night Live (not to be confused with Howard Cosell's failed show of the same name), Bill Murray would play "Nick Silver", a lounge singer who would 'loungify' anything - even the theme to Star Wars, making up lyrics if there were none.
  • A regular feature of Shooting Stars, in which Vic Reeves would sing a song in the "Club Style", to be guessed by the panellists. The resulting lyrics would be unintelligible, and only slightly less so when sung in the "correct" manner.
  • A regular feature of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, in which the genres would be suggested by the audience, immediately before (or during) the skit.
  • The Theme Tune for Blackadder, originally written by Howard Goodall as a pastiche of bombastic period-adventure themes, was reworked for subsequent series. Blackadder II uses a pseudo-Elizabethan instrumental version in the opening titles and has it sung by an In-Universe balladeer in the closing ones. For Third it becomes a minuet in the opening and a round in the closing. In Christmas Carol it's a carol sung by a choir. And Goes Forth turns it into a military march.
  • The music in Bridgerton includes various pop songs reworked into Regency-style music.
  • That's My Jam: Possible categories on "Wheel of Impossible Karaoke" include performing a popular song in a completely different musical style (as host Jimmy Fallon has been known to do), or singing one song's lyrics over the backing music of another song.
  • Monk: The episode "Mr. Monk and the Rapper" features a rap version of the show's theme song "It's a Jungle Out There" that is performed by Snoop Dogg, the episode's special guest star.
  • The first seven episodes of WandaVision are each done in the style of sitcoms from a different decade.

    Magazines 
  • Amiga Power had frequent sections called 'In The Style Of', normally depicting Amiga games in the style of other Amiga games.
  • New York magazine used to have competitions for the readers which often featured this trope. One famous example asked the readers to retell a joke (about a kangaroo in a bar) in the style of a famous writer. Contributions included Poe's "The Raven" ("At these prices? Nevermore.") and Ingmar Bergman ("The action is set in a bar or any spiritual wasteland. The bartender is underlining in a copy of Hegel when a kangaroo enters ...") And then there was the Henny Youngman version, which simply retold the original joke provided by the competition editor, word-for-word.
  • In MAD Magazine #289 (September 1989), an article wondered how the "waiter, there's a Fly in the Soup" joke would sound as told by different stand-ups popular at the time. The writer nailed the styles of David Letterman, Sam Kinison, George Carlin, Robin Williams, and others. A similar article appeared twenty years later (#489, May 2008).

    Podcasts 

    Radio 
  • I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, as well as having its One Song to the Tune of Another round, has also taken various topics and performed them in the style of various types of music (e.g. blues, calypso, even madrigals). They've also taken songs and performed them as a duet, with one team member singing normally and the other playing a role and commenting on the action. For example:
    Barry (as Lee Marvin): #I was born under a wand'ring star#
    Graeme (as his hairdresser): No! I was born under a wand'ring star!
    Barry: #Wheels are made for rolling#
    Graeme: Mules are made to pack, always pop a pair in me suitcase...
    • There's also a rarer round in which they sing a singer's song in the style of "his distant relative", with the same surname. For example, Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World in the style of Neil Armstrong:
    Barry: I see trees of green (mike scratch) red roses too (beep) I see them bloom (mike scratch) loving you (beep) and I think to myself, what a wonderful moon...
    • There's also the round Stars In Their Ears, where one panellist sings a song in the style of a celebrity. Willie Rushton once sang a song in the style of Eartha Kitt, mixing in snatches of "Santa Baby" and an impression of Orson Welles.
  • Radio station jingles are often designed to resemble the music played on the stations they're designed for. While sometimes the similarities are more vague, there are other times when a specific jingle is obviously inspired by a particular song or artist. For example, in 1964, PAMS Productions produced a series of jingles for New York's WABC based on Beatles songs, and JAM Creative Productions would later produce some of Beatlesque cuts as part of their 1987 "Rockin' For America" series for WLS in Chicago (which also features a cut with that lyric based on James Brown's "Living In America").
  • The Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama Live 34 is Doctor Who in the style of a 24-hour news channel.
  • The early-1980s BBC sketch comedy show RadioActive was a parody of commercial radio. It always included a spoof of a popular band of the day, the one in the first episode being "Meaningless Songs" by The Hee Bee Gee Bees. Although the parody group adopted a different name every episode (such as "The PCs" when they were spoofing The Police), outside of the show they were known as "The Hee Bee Gee Bees" ever afterwards.
  • As befitting its Retreaux style, several episodes of the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre series are homages to classic radio programs.
    • Their adaptation of Dagon is done in the style of Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds (1938), but with sea creatures instead of aliens (with the nested homage of the report on the Deep Ones' attack on the Golden Gate ferry being a pastiche of Herbert Oglevee Morrison's famously overwrought coverage of the Hindenburg disaster).
    • The original story The White Tree borrows heavily from the famed Clan of the Fiery Cross storyline from The Adventures of Superman radio show, particularly its accurate use of authentic (and authentically stupid) KKK organization and terminology.
    • In a bit of Recursive Adaptation, the adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness is presented as a radio host playing a series of interviews and other audio recordings, not unlike BBC Radio 4's hit Lovecraft Investigations series, which also features an episode based on Whisperer (two if you count the earlier radio drama Fugue State in the same continuity).

    Tabletop Games 

    Theatre 
  • There exists a one-act play entitled De-LEAR-ium which replays the opening scene of Shakespeare's King Lear multiple times — the first time as written, and each subsequent time in the style of an entirely different work or genre, including Star Wars (featuring the evil Kingth Learder) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (with Lear as Frank N. Furter, and Gloucester and Cordelia as Brad and Janet).
  • The play American Ma(u)l (sic). The show opens on Thomas Jefferson's plantation, with all of his slaves at work in the fields, singing a mournful-sounding work song... and after a moment, it becomes apparent that what they're singing is actually a re-do of Nelly's "Hot In Here".
  • The Musical of Musicals: The Musical! takes a classic theatre plot (a woman can't pay her rent) and presents it in the styles of Rogers & Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Kander & Ebb.
  • Two Gentlemen of Lebowski can be briefly summarised as The Big Lebowski in the style of William Shakespeare.
  • The whole point of The Hip Hop Shakespeare Company

    Video Games 
  • Bigfoot from MapleStory sounds quite a bit like Kevin Schilder's work from the Heretic and Hexen games. This would count as a Suspiciously Similar Song except that while it fits the style of Schilder's music, it does not seem to sound like any specific song.
  • Pursuit of Truth from Halo 2 is more or less Leela from Marathon (Bungie's previous FPS) rearranged in the style of Kraftwerk's The Robots.
  • At the very end of the credits for Syndicate (2012), you hear an all-too-short jazz take on the theme.
  • The Super Mario Bros. series has had tunes from past games remade in various styles over the years, both within and outside of the games. The well-known overworld theme from the original NES Super Mario Bros. has gotten the most attention, including an "a capella" version made with synthesized "voices" for Super Mario Sunshine (which would subsequently be covered by actual a capella singing groups).
  • A side effect of the "tears" in space-time in Bioshock Infinite is Columbians picking up on songs from the future and writing their own versions. This leads to stuff like a ragtime version of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears and a barbershop quartet singing an a capella rendition of "God Only Knows" from Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys.
  • The famous, retro, cartoony art style of Team Fortress 2 is based mainly on the art of J.C. Leyendecker, but elements from Norman Rockwell and Dean Cornwell influenced the game as well.
  • A minor fad in the Touhou Project fandom is to take music, make it sound distinctly Touhou-y, and title it "If X was composed by ZUN". This usually involves trumpets. For example, this supermarket jingle.
  • Between the publication of Doom and the coining of the term "first-person shooter" (a year or two at least), all other FPSes were invariably dubbed "Doom clones".
  • The Retro Hero DLC/Pre-Order Bonus for Mighty No. 9 changes Beck's look to one very reminiscent of Minecraft's playable characters, though this was probably not intentional.
  • Background radio music in Wolfenstein: The New Order comprises of German-language pastiches of 1960s pop, supposedly released by Neumond Recordings.
    • One of the songs is House of the Rising Sun in the style of German heimatmelodie.
    • There's some Bilingual Bonus in the artist names - for example, "Die Kaefer" sound like early The Beatles.
  • "Fever" from Dr. Mario done in the style of "Wipe Out!" by The Ventures.
  • Mega Corp produced a synthwave medley of the Dark World, Light World, and Sanctuary themes from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
  • The advertisement for the collector's edition of Sonic Mania (seen here) is done in the style of a typical '80s infomercial, complete with the endslate that typically ended '80s infomercials. The one for Sonic Mania Plus (seen here) is specifically done to recreate an old Sega Genesis infomercial which showed two televisions with Genesis and Super Nintendo games being played side-by-side, only in this case one of the televisions is playing Sonic Mania Plus and the other one is playing a generic AAA first-person shooter (it even includes the classic Sega shout at the end!).
  • In Final Fantasy, the Chocobo theme is reinterpreted in various genres, starting out exclusively with Latin genres for IV and V, before being put into every modern pop genre starting from VI. This has included techno, surf rock a la "Surfin' USA", a 5-beat jazz arrangement a la "Take Five", swing, a "mod" arrangement similar to "Talking 'Bout My Generation", and eventually ending up (somehow) as screamo metal in XIII-2.
  • Not for Broadcast: "Swell to Be a Man", a dance number song in the Telethon that was added in the Quality of Life Patch version, is done in the style of the songs of the 1950s' Elvis Presley. It has to be seen to be believed.
  • The Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection Original Soundtrack includes numerous pieces of background music re-arranged in a designated style (e.g., Pop Rock, Big Band, and R&B). The Pop Rock version of "Hometown" in particular sounds just like it came from the score for Sonic Colors.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • We Bare Bears: The episode "Planet Bears" is done in the style of a nature documentary, specifically one from The BBC.

Alternative Title(s): Done In The Style Of

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