"Approved by FASA! Or at least they promised not to sue!"
—Box for Critter-Tek, a parody of BattleTech
A sister trope to the Deconstruction Crossover, this is what happens where a parody or deconstruction uses an official character from an earlier work with permission from the original creator. Often, but not always, this will be The Film of the Series.
May be an example of The Man Is Sticking It to the Man. Compare with Parody Assistance (the original creators help with the parody) and Self-Parody (the original creators are entirely responsible for the parody).
Examples
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Comic Books
- Marvel Comics parodied their own characters in several series, Brand Ecch, Not Brand Ecch, and What The—?! among them.
- Sergio Aragonés Destroys DC, a one-shot, followed by another one-shot from Marvel.
Films — Live-Action
- Enchanted is a Disney movie that parodies the movies in their Animated Canon.
- The Casino Royale film of the 1960s, although it isn't canon in the sense that it was not made by Eon Films. And in a slightly more serious note, Never Say Never Again.
- A Very Brady Movie in respect to The Brady Bunch
- The modern OSS 117 films produced by Gaumont and starring Jean Dujardin are James Bond/Tuxedo and Martini parody movies based upon a series of French spy novels that were adapted into films in The '60s (also produced by Gaumont back then). It definitely gets into Deconstruction territory, as the protagonist is a jingoistic jerk and the movie shows him and his superiors as completely clueless of the public opinion in Europe's former colonies.
- According to Word of God, the film version of Kiss Me Deadly is this for the original Mike Hammer novels by Mickey Spillane.
- Starship Troopers is a Deconstruction version, although it's more like Heinlein's novel was chosen as an outlet to satirize Patriotic Fervor and militarism, than that it was an attack on the novel itself.
- The 1930s series of Bulldog Drummond movies had one where Drummond is injured in a car crash and Jack Pennington (played by comedian Jack Hulbert) is forced to stand in for him. It is considered part of the official series.
- To an extent Wild Wild West, the Will Smith vehicle.
- Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and the subsequent A&C monster movies, are considered to be in-continuity with the classic Universal Horror films.
- The Long Goodbye, being a deconstructive adaptation of the Philip Marlowe novels.
Literature
- In the detective novel Ask a Policeman, the participating authors swapped detectives (so Lord Peter Wimsey was written by Anthony Berkeley, while Berkeley's detective Roger Sheringham was written by Dorothy L. Sayers).
Live-Action TV
- Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger, while the very title notes that it is an unofficial ("Hikonin") Super Sentai, it is produced by Toei, the same company behind the Super Sentai franchise. It includes cameos from previous Super Sentai characters... though they're only in AkibaRed's mind. It's also Hotter and Sexier, and comes with a disclaimer telling the "good kids" who normally watch Super Sentai to stay away.
- Doctor Who has The Curse of Fatal Death, produced by The BBC and written by Steven Moffat.
- The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot started as a fan film from former Doctor Peter Davison, but it became an official part of the 50th anniversary celebrations when Steven Moffat found out about it. In addition to being credited as an executive producer, Moffat plays himself as the villain of the piece.
- The Community episode "G.I. Jeff", which parodies G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, was officially approved by Hasbro and thus features the logos, music, and characters from the cartoon, as well as Michael Bell and Bill Ratner reprising their respective roles as Duke and Flint.
Music
- Although he doesn't legally have to, "Weird Al" Yankovic gets permission from the original artists before parodying their songs. This even extends to the polka medleys, as the songwriters involved have to agree to reduce their royalties to a percentage of the track instead of a percentage of the entire album it appears on.
Tabletop Games
- Critter-Tek, the funny animal parody of Battletech from Crunchy Frog Enterprises, was licenced by FASA and included an actual Battletech record sheet. A sticker on the cover said "Approved by FASA! Or at least they promised not to sue!"
Video Games
- Big's Big Fishing Adventure 3: The Trial is a web browser game developed by Sega of Virgin Islands that makes fun of both the Sonic the Hedgehog games and Sega themselves.
- Parodius is Konami's own Affectionate Parody of Gradius. It's in the name!
- The LEGO games revel in making fun of every franchise they get a hold of.
Western Animation
- Family Guy Presents: Laugh It Up, Fuzzball and Robot Chicken Star Wars, both endorsed by George Lucas. (This was before Disney buying the franchise; for whatever reason, Family Guy hasn't done any Star Wars jokes since the Disney buyout.)
- Robot Chicken DC Comics Special.
- Appearances of DC characters on the MAD television series can be seen as authorized, as the show is run by DC Comics. Mad even got a slot on DC Nation. (This could theoretically apply to the magazine as well.)
- A Scooby-Doo segment the show did also qualifies as this, as Warner Bros. owns both entities and used the Scooby gang in their official color schemes.
- Phineas and Ferb: Mission Marvel and Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars due to Disney owning all the properties involved.
- The Duck Dodgers episode "Samurai Quack", which featured the voices of both Genndy Tartakovsky and Mako.
- [adult swim]'s projects using Hanna-Barbera characters, the most prominent being Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
