"They fight! And bite!
They fight and bite and fight!
Fight, fight, fight!
Bite, bite, bite!
The Itchy and Scratchy Show!"
A fictional show that takes place within an actual show; or, occasionally, a fictional installment or incarnation of an actual show.
Shows-within-a-show are usually of low quality. This is intentional: the low quality of the show is part of the joke or the misery of the characters involved. As a general rule, the more central the Show Within A Show is to the actual show, the better — or at least higher-gloss — it will be. On the other hand, Finagle's Law dictates that The Show Must Go Wrong, so don't expect to get through it without at least one catastrophe.
Many comedies have short one-off gags where they parody existing shows. Most of the following examples are recurring and they come in up to four varieties (which can be overlapping):
They fight and bite and fight!
Fight, fight, fight!
Bite, bite, bite!
The Itchy and Scratchy Show!"
- The characters are involved in the production of the show.
- The characters are fans of the show, or only see it occasionally.
- The show-within-a-show is a plot point.
- The internal show, in either variety, is eerily similar to the real show.
Examples:
- Anime and Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Animated Films
- Live-Action Films
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Radio
- Theater
- Video Games
- Web Animation
- Web Comics
- Web Original
- Western Animation
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Model Trains
- The smallest-scale model train is in the window of a toy store—which is in a model village that's part of a model train.
Music
- The song "Movie in a Movie" by Tony Goldmark is about a ridiculously big set of nested movies.
- Selena Gomez's Love You Like A Love Song has a video where she is in a karaoke bar, with her singing in and out of the bar's TV.
Pinball
- Family Guy has a miniature working pinball machine on the playfield, which is played by Stewie at key points during the game.
- Shrek, a reskinned version of Family Guy, has "Donkey's Pinball" instead.
- The Video Mode for Theater Of Magic is a video pinball game.
- Lights... Camera... Action! casts the player as a film Director who must finish a blockbuster action film.
- In the bonus rounds of Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball, Sonic operataes an actual pinball table. You can see his reflection in the glass, and his eyes even move as you play.
Professional Wrestling
- All the Talk Shows With Fists.
- The comic book from which Thunderbolt and Lightning originated from in GLOW.
- "Guapos University" and "Fitness con Dark Angel" were among CMLL's. Five episodes of the latter were put on Youtube in 2014.
- Ring of Honor has had Things That Piss Charlie Haas Off, Public Silas Announcement, and Story Time With Adam Cole, among others.
- SHINE Wrestling has "Lucha Family Films(This does not exist)".
Puppet Shows
- Dog City (the cartoon) in Dog City.
- The Mr. Potato Head Show: This is actually the basic premise: the main cast films episodes of a TV show (not all of which we get to see) for a pair of network executives. However, what this show is or even its genre is different in every episode.
- The Muppet Show on The Muppet Show.
- In an episode of Dinosaurs (the early '90's animatronic puppet show), Earl watches a sock-puppet show where a woman refers to some skanky-looking characters as "cheap hose/ho's." (See Parental Bonus.) He says something close to, "I love this show. It's got one meaning that's funny for grown-ups, and one that's funny for kids!"
- Up Late with Miss Piggy on The Muppets.
Stand-Up Comedy
- "If you ever find out what you're watching is a show within a show, sit back and hang on for the ride of your life." — Jack Handey
Tabletop Games
- GURPS
- GURPS Magical Items 3 includes a brief description of a setting where The Fair Folk battle with Magitek Humongous Mecha in the chapter describing such mecha. The vignette for an earlier chapter on magic toys suggests that this setting is a popular kids' TV show in the world of GURPS Technomancer, with its own line of living action figures.
- The opening vignette of Technomancer has a police mage channel-surfing while on stakeout. What she finds are mostly news and commercials, but there's a trailer for a show where FBI agents Cat Morrigan and Dara Skuld investigate rumours of The Fair Folk.
- Mention is made of a popular holoseries in Warhammer 40,000 called Arbitrator Foreboding, a member of the Adeptus Arbites who hunts down mutants and heretic with relish and a very big gun.
Theme Parks
- The former Disaster! attraction at Universal Studios Florida was based around the fictitious Disaster Studios, which created "films" such as "Apocageddon", "Das Schurke", "Baboon!", and "300 Knots Landing"; with their upcoming production being "Mutha Nature".
