Sometimes it's just fun to make fun of a trope. It's fun to screw around with it or find the humor in those tropes. Thus we have the
Parodied Trope.
Writers can even spoof their own tropes as a form of
Self-Deprecation.
Sometimes this comes in the form of an
Exaggerated Trope, or even a
Downplayed Trope. Sometimes it overlaps with
Zig-Zagging Trope, or
Inverted Trope. If the trope is called on by the author, but still used, it's a
Lampshade Hanging.
Compare other kinds of
Playing with a Trope,
Satire/Parody/Pastiche,
Parody,
Played for Laughs.
Not to be confused with
Parody Tropes (a list of tropes that are parodies themselves).
Examples:
- Lady Gaga spoofed Impractically Fancy Outfits on a Saturday Night Live appearance.
- Also spoofing that trope was Kappa Mikey. Mikey and Lilly go overboard with all kinds of crazy clothing designs when trying to get their ideas bought by a well-known clothing designer. This included a cement dress and clothing made of garbage and food.
- South Park of course makes fun of loads of tropes and plots from All Just a Dream to Zombie Apocalypse.
- Tropic Thunder spoofed loads of moviemaking tropes and some war movie tropes.
- The Simpsons, too, makes fun of plenty of tropes, and in fact one of its sendups of Retirony is where the trope name comes from.
- Those Lacking Spines loves to parody tropes as much as it loves deconstructing them.
- Atop the Fourth Wall spoofs Totally Radical with the '90s Kid character.
- Kickassia is absolutely loaded with trope spoofs.
- Just about everything Mel Brooks does.
- Total Overdose parodies the Hyperspace Arsenal in the opening scene, as Ram carries every single gun in the game in his arms, and a stick of dynamite in his mouth.
- The online roleplaying game Champions Online includes a parody of the iconic Obama poster which reads "Trope"
- Pretty much every Discworld novel ever written parodies a common fantasy trope or six.
- The Nostalgia Chick spoofed Black Best Friend, with Nella, who's white but adopted.
- "Muffin the Vampire Baker", the most shameless parody to have appeared in Sluggy Freelance up until that date, went so overboard for much of one strip
that the trope it was actually parodying has to be identified as parody itself (especially of characters).
- The Ratchet & Clank games do this quite a bit.
- Since Soap Dish is a parody of Soap Operas, many of their tropes also get spoofed.
