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"Fans, as Hollywood Hogan walks away and you look at forty thousand plus on hand, if you're even THINKING about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not, because we understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here one time as Cactus Jack, is gonna win their World title. Ha! That's gonna put some butts in the seats, heh."
— Tony Schiavone, WCW Monday Nitro, 4 January 1999
I can't bear to imagine what Elmer Fudd singing "Love Me Tender" must sound like. Oh wait, it'd probably sound a lot like Cyndi Lauper.
Every so often a TV Series, Film, or even radio talk show will make a reference to another one, usually in the same market niche or genre. Most of the time it's just a simple Shout Out or an Homage, and if it's a Comedy Series, you can expect at least a little spoofing. Sometimes, though, it's a little more... mean spirited than that. Whether it's because of a perceived rivalry, jealousy, bitterness or pride, the mention will be derogatory and boastful. More often than not, rather than be a "Take that!" to the disparaged show, it'll reflect even worse on the joker, it'll actually make a good production turn sour, and it makes a bad production look like a monumental act of hubris. It can be especially jarring (and often hilarious for reasons the producers didn't intend) if the show being mocked goes on to win popular and / or critical acclaim, awards, and respect from its audience, while the show doing the mocking becomes widely reviled or forgotten.
"Take That" is something you hear a lot on DVD commentaries. Whenever the show gets to a gag that's at the expense of some real-life group(s), the commentator says, "Take that, organized religion!" Or whoever the butt of the joke was.
It is more likely to occur if the creators of the work are relatively confident they won't suffer any significant backlash from the insult; for example, someone who has Protection From Editors, or the writer of a Fan Work or Webcomic. When different creative teams working in the same shared universe use their stories to lob Take Thats at each other, they're Armed With Canon. If the producers of the show are using Take That to respond to criticism of the show, then it's Take That Critics.
Note if this is directed at yourself or your group, it's Self Deprecation.
Used recently in commercials. Often uses Brand X / No Celebrities Were Harmed / Scapegoat Ads.
Not to be confused with the British pop group of the same name.
Not to be confused with You Suck.
Examples:
Western Animation
Live Action TV
- The short-lived sitcom Sledge Hammer! was filled to bursting with examples of Take That. Creator and producer Alan Spencer had a deep-rooted contempt for other television sitcoms, and frequently expressed it with digs at Mr Belvedere ("Make it quick! I need to get home to watch Mr. Belvedere!" "Well, somebody has to...") and Designing Women ("This robot performs a humanitarian service. It will let no human watch Designing Women."). There was also an early reference to the Jack Palance series Ripleys Believe It Or Not... a show which was canceled to make room for Sledge Hammer! on ABC's prime-time schedule.
- Another episode featured Sledge's reaction upon meeting a "Max Headroom" version of himself: "My God! An hour with you would be hell!"
- This is pretty much the basic format of Joel McHale's hosting on The Soup, particularly that of his fellow shows on the Guilty Pleasures-saturated E! The fact that he clearly has so much fun doing it as opposed to sounding bitter or jaded helps him avoid the usual traps.
- In the smart cop drama "Homicide: Life On The Streets" impressionable Detective Bayliss became awed after interviewing an emergency-room doctor about the death of a patient and said, "It's like she was doing God's work," he enthused. "How can we compare?" Not long after, his cynical, veteran partner, Detective Pembleton (Andre Braugher) was sick of it. "You want glory? Go work at E.R.," he snapped. "Homicide's fine by me." A not so subtle jab at the wildly popular hospital show.
- Near the end of Remington Steele (which was picked up for one more season after Pierce Brosnan had been picked to play the next Bond), there was an episode with an elderly British spy who said "We in MI5 thought James Bond was a sissy." (Forcing Brosnan back for one more season kept him from being Bond and foisted Timothy Dalton on us.)
- The last episode of Riptide had the team helping out an obvious-but-stupid version of Moonlighting (who were killing Riptide in the ratings, leading to its cancellation).
- An episode of Monk had him on the set of a CSI stand-in while investigating their lead actor. The stand-in has its investigators pulling out a ridiculous device that looked something like a metal detector with a bottom that glowed blue. We later see a summation bit from the show using many of CSI's distinctive visual effects where the killer took out his own blood and froze it into a bullet, just so that it would melt without a trace later.
- Doesn't that exist in real life, though, the "ridiculous" glowing thing?
- Speaking of which, an episode of Law And Order ("Kid Pro Quo") had Lennie disgusted at a lab tech, saying "Those crime scene guys are highly overrated. The problem is, they all think they're cops." A fairly clear dig at CSI and other Forensic Dramas.
- On another episode of Law And Order, after arresting a wannabe mafioso who did a lousy job covering his tracks, one of the police officers looked at the other and said something to the effect of "It's The Sopranos. Makes them all think they're invincible."
- Yet another episode of Law And Order featured a video blogger named WeepingWillow17 who owned a stuffed monkey puppet and got kidnapped, obviously based on lonelygirl15, a series co-created by one Miles Beckett. The episode in question also featured a scene where an amateur video maker named Miles was criticised for including too many cuts; his show was described as "visual masturbation", with "no depth, no theme, no narrative..." Ouch. Just in case the viewers didn't get it, the videos were then compared directly to WeepingWillow17.
- Just one more: A more recent episode featured a sinister, scientology-like cult that was portrayed as litigious, greedy, psychologically and possibly physically abusive, kept secret files on their own people, and were strongly suspected of driving the victim to her death however, this particular Take That ended on a rather weird note: not only was the cult not directly responsible for her death, the real killer (who also felt harassed by the cult) joined them in order to find peace, and one of the prosecutors (the one who looks like Michael Douglass to this troper) quips that he might be involved in the influential cult as well.
- Ironically, on an episode of CSI itself, when a reality TV crew was filming the CSIs while they were working, Grissom remarked that there were too many forensic crime shows on TV.
- Never mind that William Peterson, TV's Gil Grissom, was against the splintering of the CSI franchise, even refusing to appear in character with anyone from the Miami cast.
- In the first two episodes of The Best Years, Dawn was a former teen actress whose never-seen Show Within A Show existed solely to poke fun at Degrassi The Next Generation. In one case, it actually parodied a specific Degrassi episode. When Dawn gets cast as Lady Macbeth in a college play, she can't understand the role at all, and says, "if Lady Macbeth were buying her first bra or discovering the dangers of under-age drinking, I could do this." The producer of The Best Years worked on Degrassi The Next Generation for almost its entire run, and a few of the D:TNG cast has shown up on guest roles — in fact, on The-N's website, Jay from Degrassi was on one of the clips they showed from Dawn's TV role — so this could be more of an Affectionate Parody.
- Doctor Who: In the episode "The Empty Child", Rose introduces the Doctor to a new acquaintance as "Mr. Spock", and when he complains she says, "What was I supposed to say? You don't have a name! Don't you ever get tired of 'Doctor' — Doctor who?". In the original script, but not in the broadcast episode, the Doctor responds with "I'd rather have 'Doctor Who' than Star Trek!" Luckily Steven Moffat saw sense.
- Doctor Who delivered a Take That to their entire fanbase once; the character of Whizzkid in "The Greatest Show In The Galaxy", a whining, stereotypical nerd who didn't show any hesitation in telling the producers of the aforementioned show that their work was unwatchable rubbish directly to their faces ("I never saw it in the old days, but I know it's not as good as it used to be"). And then killed him. Horribly. Whether or not this little shot was justified, it seemed that contemporary outspoken criticism about the recent poor quality of the show had hit a nerve...
- The spoof Universe Compendium The Completely Useless Encyclopedia turns this one round, by listing many of the complaints fans had at the time under the guise of pointing out (correctly) that they're true of the Psychic Circus in the story.
- Fandom is divided on whether the episode "Love and Monsters" is an Affectionate Parody and loving tribute to the things that make Doctor Who fandom special, or just a huge Take That to its fans. The truth is it's kind of both; the 'good' fans are presented as being slightly geeky and socially awkward but fundamentally decent and good people who come together, make connections, are inspired creatively and even fall in love as a result of their fandom, whereas the 'bad' fans (as represented by the Absorbaloff) are humourless jobsworths who treat fandom as a joyless ritual, establishing pecking orders (with them at the top) and sucking all the life and creativity out of the whole thing for the sake of their own ego-fulfillment. It might not be coincidental that it is sometimes suggested that the Absorbaloff is based on Ian Levine, a well-known fan who arguably represents more than a few of these negative traits.
- The third season finale also clearly flipped the bird at the American government when the Doctor manages to turn back time a whole year to avoid a vast majority of the deaths that occured...and stops just short of saving the US president as well; with the Doctor specifying that "everything is back to normal." This aspect is arguably justified in it being clearly established that the Timey Wimey Ball effect that allowed him to do this only kicked in after the President was killed — however, said President's depiction as a arrogant, buffoonish jackass who bore a certain resemblance to a certain current President definitely belongs here — and vitrolic comparisons made in that vein on the US DVD commentary fuel the fire even more.
- More maybe-anti-US sentiment: the alternate universe depicted in "Turn Left" had Miss Foster breed the Adipose (creatures made of body fat) in America instead of the UK ("a wonderfully fat country", as per the regular universe). She quickly sends the US into critical status and it's not just because the Doctor is dead in that universe. Oh, and UNIT loses contact with Air Force One during the invasion in "The Stolen Earth". Two Presidents down...
- Arguably justified in that the UK was in ruins after the Titanic nuked southern England. Losing weight probably wasn't people's first priority.
- Also, the Series 1 two-parter "Aliens of London"/"World War Three" had (farting) aliens take over the British government and contrive a situation so they would be given access to nuclear launch codes under the pretense of stopping nonexistent "massive weapons of destruction." Also, part of the setup involved crashing a spaceship into Big Ben in a shot that bears some resemblance to the 9/11 attacks.
- Let's not overlook this line from The Christmas Invasion:
Harriet Jones, Prime Minister: You may tell the President this: He's not my boss and he's certainly not turning this into a war.
- The episode "Tooth and Claw" hints that the Royal Family are werewolves. The Queen loved that episode, though.
- Babylon 5 took a big swing at Star Trek Deep Space Nine this way, when Ivanova complained about a gift shop on the station: "This isn't some deep-space franchise, this station is about something!" For added humor, the line was written by Peter David, best known as one of the most talented Star Trek tie-in writers, and he was surprised that J Michael Straczynski was actually going to use it.
- Later on, David and Straczynski would trade Take Thats over a teddy bear. I Am Not Making This Up. Said teddybear appeared in the same episode as "Ba-bear-lon 5." I Am Not Making This Up either.
- As well, a TV Guide writer with the last name Jarvis predicted after watching the pilot movie that the show, planned from the beginning as a single story told over five seasons, wouldn't last a month, resulting in the occasional line such as "The Jarvis toilets are acting up again." The fourth season finale, the first episode written after JMS knew for sure that he would get to tell the whole story, takes a far more direct approach: it opens with a simple shot of text on a black background that says "Dedicated to all the people who predicted that the Babylon Project would fail in its mission. Faith manages."
- The character of Harriet on Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is partly a Take That on Kristen Chenowyth, Aaron Sorkin's ex-girlfriend, and partly... well, I just don't freaking know. It got really blatant when they devoted an entire episode to recreating Chenowyth's photo shoot for FHM, and having the male senior writers lambast her for it.
- Most of Studio 60 was a Take That directed to everyone who annoyed Aaron Sorkin.
- Self Deprecation drove Studio 60 as much if not far more than Take That. Harriet was portrayed as a balanced, endlessly caring woman who Sorkin's alter ego never fell out of love with.
- A third season episode of Mork And Mindy actually has Mork meeting Robin Williams (I Am Not Making This Up), but before he actually meets him, Mork spends most of the episode being horrified that people think he looks like Robin, making the first part of this episode Robin doing a Take That at himself (the rest is more of a commentary on the downside of fame.)
Mork: Do you know what "Robin" means on Ork?
Mindy: What?
(Mork whispers to Mindy)
Mindy: That's disgusting!
Mork: Don't look at me, I didn't give him that smutty name!
And later...
Mork: (comparing himself to the cover of "Reality, What a Concept") He looks like he does his hair with a cuisinart! Man, he's got a road map for eyes! You could pack a family in that nose, man! I mean, look at that mouth, "Duuurrr...". They had to airbrush his entire face, are you kidding? I mean, I'm bright and cheery and this guy's got big problems!
- The episode "Mork's Mixed Emotions" had a brief Take That against Steve Martin. Mork, after a wild night of overwhelming emotions, bursts into the record store and throws a cardboard cut-out of Steve across the room and yells Steve's trademark "EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE MEEEEEEE!". Perhaps not really intended as a Take That, since Steve and Robin are friends in real life, but it sure comes off as one.
- And one of the more bizarre (and So Bad Its Good) episodes was a Take That against commercial television, with Mork becoming a zombie consumer and then having a nightmare about all his friends becoming tools of the advertisers. Of course, being on a commercial network, they had to add a coda that "advertising is okay and it's up to the consumer to decide whether to buy or not." It even had a Fourth Wall breaking ending, with Mork saying "If there's something on television you don't want to watch, you can simply just press this butt-"... followed by the screen shrinking down to a dot like when older TVs turned off. (Perhaps also a Take That to Executive Meddling that changed the show for the second season?)
- Scrubs has a pretty mean Take That against Greys Anatomy disguised as a compliment.
J.D.: I love Grey's Anatomy. It's like they took our lives and put it on TV.
- They did another one against House, when Keith mentions seeing a disease on House and Cox goes on a rampage.
- But they also did the episode "My House", which definitely falls in the Affectionate Parody category.
- In the episode My Own Worst Enemy J.D. wins a "Who-Cares-y" award from Doctor Cox, and thinks "Suck on that, Tony Shalhoub". Zach Braff has been nominated for a Best Actor Emmy twice, and lost to Shalhoub both times.
- And this is to say nothing of the episode "My Life In Four Cameras", which can be summed up most easily as a Take That against the majority of the sitcom industry.
- This editor has seen a poster for the showings of Lost season 4 on Sky which say in big letters ANSWERS ARE COMING and underneath in much smaller letters [Unless you have Virgin Media or Freeview]!
- Just to clarify this, Sky One, the channel that premieres Lost in the UK, used to be carried on Virgin Cable and its predecessors until a dispute caused it to pull out. And it's never been on Freeview, the free digital terrestrial service, because it's a pay channel. So to see Lost in Britain you need a Sky Digital subscription. Or wait for the DV Ds.
- Stargate SG-1, possibly in retaliation to Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich (the creators of the original Stargate movie) expressing their disdain with the series and stressing their uninvolvement with it at every opportunity, pulled a Take That against their next movie Independence Day in the episode "Politics":
Daniel: Senator, we have reason to believe that the Goa'uld are about to launch an attack, in force, in ships. Kinsey: Then I think they'll regret taking on the United States military! O'Neill: Oh, for God's sake... Daniel: Oh, you're right! We'll — we'll just upload a computer virus into the mothership!
- One of the later episodes of Murder She Wrote featured a rather savage attack on Friends in the form of a Show Within A Show called "Buds", among whose cast there was, of course, the requisite murder. And murderer.
- This troper also remembers an obvious spoof of then-rival Cagney & Lacey on Murder She Wrote — the cops of the week were female partners, one blonde and one dark, both with rather outrageously blue-collar accents, shown (much to Jessica's bemusement) as almost constantly on the phone trying to solve personal/family issues.
- The series Millennium was apparently the subject of so much Executive Meddling from the Broadcast Standards and Practices that series writer Darin Morgin parodied him in the episode "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me," with a segment about how a demon drives a Broadcast Standards & Practices guy insane (by making him see a dancing demon baby — I Am Not Making This Up; and it may be a reference to Ally McBeal). This eventually results in the hilarious line, "You will not get away with this! The final scene is gratuitously violent! Aliens would not carry an Uzi! They are a superior race and they would not carry or utilize automatic weapons! I will not approve this! I am Broadcast Standards and Practices!"
- The second series of Extras was largely a Take That towards sitcoms that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant don't like — primarily catchphrase-based, broad and unnaturalistic shows such as Little Britain.
- And the Christmas special series finale was greatly pointed at Big Brother.
- Gervais and Merchant have noted, however, they were not attempting to label people who do "broad" comedy as being bad, but that you shouldn't settle for less if you want to aspire to greater things. Granted this does not mean they neccesarily like such shows, but it's not quite as venomous as the show would make you think...
- Commander-in-Chief, the show with Geena Davis as the country's first female president, did this pretty blatantly in one episode (though, surprisingly, never to The West Wing). There was an episode where a coastal city was hit by a hurricane. Within hours, the president was there helping oversee the relief effort. Gee, I wonder who that was a swipe at? As if that weren't Anvilicious enough, the president was later shown reading to children when an aide came up and told her something important was happening. She immediately handed the book to one of the kids to continue reading, got up, and walked away. Take That, Mister
Thirty Twenty Percent! Of course, Commander-in-Chief left the airwaves long before the end of the Bush administration, proving you cannot build a show on political potshots without actual quality to hang it on...
- They actually did work in a shot at The West Wing — they had Geena Davis' president handle an almost-identical situation to Martin Sheen's President Bartlet — (a US sub trapped in North Korean waters). The situation was similar enough to be a "Our fictional prez is better than your fictional prez" moment.
- In Special Unit 2, one of the main characters explain to the newbie that every monster legend she has ever heard of is true — except vampires, they're complete fiction.
- Many people see the Supernatural episode "Malleus Maleficurum" as a Take That against Charmed, what with The Book of Shadows and a group of witches (who all die horribly) who looked and acted suspiciously like the Charmed girls and all.
- In an internal variation and depending on what way you look at it, "What Is And What Should Never Be" is either the writers saying Dean would be a complete waste of space if it wasn't for hunting, or Dean thinking he really is that awful and slutty and utterly useless.
- The Chuck Lorre written episode of CSI, entitled "Two And A Half Deaths," was a long "Take That" against Cybil Shephard, who was apparently extremely difficult to work with on her self titled sitcom.
- Beakmans World took friendly jabs at the competition on occasion. Beakman, on letting his mom do a challenge: "But none of the other TV science guys let their moms do stuff!" His mom replies with the Jump Off A Bridge Rebuttal.
- The "lemonlyman.com" subplot in The West Wing episode "The U.S Poet Laureate" — in which White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman stumbles upon a web-forum dedicated to him and posts on it only to be widely mocked and told he doesn't know anything about politics — is considered something a of a Take That to popular online community Television Without Pity, and is reportedly based on on West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin's experiences when posting on it. The members of the community are described as "hysterical" (not in a good way), and the forum administrator as dictatorial and petty.
- The West Wing also pretty savagely attacked Dr. Laura Schlessinger, prominent critic of homosexuality, with their own "Dr. Lara" character in this
 clip.
- Murphy Brown was famous for mocking politician Dan Quayle with attacks ranging from subtle to outright. It got to the point that when the titular character became pregnant and decided to raise her child as a single mother, Quayle took the opportunity to publicly denounce single motherhood. Murphy Brown gave it right back by having Murphy tearfully complain to Frank that Quayle was mocking her lifestyle. Frank, incredulous at Murphy's trauma, responded simply, "Murphy, it's Dan Quayle." In the following episode, Murphy responds in an apparently mature way by having a special edition of FYI focused on several kinds of families... then hires a truck to dump several tons of potatoes on Quayle's front door.
- G4's Attack Of The Show once made an aside reference to 4chan in, literally, the last fifteen seconds of one episode. And for the next week, every time someone would post in any one of their boards, be it /b/, /cgl/, you name it, the "name" would always come up as one of G4's on-air personalities (as well as the usual assortment of G4-targeted insults). AOTS retaliated by creating the EPIC FAIL segment, which singles out one online video in particular that has poor content, a convoluted setting, or people who are clearly trying too hard.
- British TV show Spaced did this a few times to Phantom Menace in series two. For example a parody of the end scene of Return of the Jedi, except instead of Anakin's body being burned, it was a set of boxes of Star Wars memorabilia. Ironically, George Lucas's company gave the series leave to use music cues, etc to do this with because of the homages and shout outs in the first series.
- Keith Olbermann's Worst Person In The World segment on MSNBC — an, ah, enthusiastic expansion of an old Bob and Ray routine (see below) — consists of nothing but TakeThats. Unsurprisingly, the most frequent "winner" of the title is Olbermann's arch-rival in political commentary shows, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News. (Olbermann's Countdown and O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor are in the same timeslot.)
- The short-lived series The Book of Daniel was basically one long Take That on, well, practically everything, but mostly religion, as it concerned a priest named Daniel Webster (yes, really) who has visions of Jesus. You'd think that would be more than enough, but the show also gives the priest an alcoholic wife and a gay Republican son and a teenage druggie daughter and an adopted Chinese son who's dating a girl whose parents hate Asians and a brother-in-law who runs off with church funds and abandons his family and a lesbian sister-in-law and a female bishop who is sleeping with Daniel's married father and a mother with Alzheimer's disease.
- Season four of The Wire features a despicable cop who completely guts the one unit in the department that's actually doing real work. His name is Marrimow, after an editor at the Baltimore Sun who producer David Simon grew to despise during his time there.
- Simon then takes it one step further by introducing an unlikeable, two-faced newspaper editor in the fifth season based off of the real Marrimow.
- Diagnosis Murder once had a Take That against the game show Twenty One, where Dick Van Dyke's character went on a corrupt game show called Thru The Roof, featuring soundproof booths. He noted that it was difficult to breathe in the booths. And someone probably got murdered in there or something, it's been a while since I've seen it.
- Adam Buxton's Sketch Show Mee BOX (which consists of skits based on the type of videos you would find on You Tube) has a sketch involving an interview with a fictional actor "Famous Guy" which has several Take Thats within. The first and most obvious is a jab at the popularity of actors, as Famous Guy is referred to as a "pretending man" and "the best at pretending". It also parodies the movie industy's constant rehashing of the same ideas with nondescript movie titles like "Horse Chase", "The Exploding Car" and "They Came From Space There". American actors trying to duplicate a British Accent is sent-up with Famous Guy's bad attempt at a Cockney accent. There's a more subtle jab at men's magazines in the first part of the sketch: if you pause at the "Man Magazine" you can read headlines such as "Articles about sex inside here" and "Are all feelings homosexual? Why the answer is yes". This is perhaps aimed at the Daily Sport, which has recently relaunched itself as being about nothing but "Sports, girls and funny stuff".
- This troper found the mockery of American actors doing accents a touch ironic, since the actor playing Famous Guy is doing it with a really horrendous fake American accent.
- In the Red Dwarf episode "Beyond a Joke", Kryten drives a tank into a virtual reality adaptation of Pride And Prejudice. According to the accompanying article in the Radio Times, the sentiment was: "Can't the BBC do anything later than the eighteenth century?" Judging by how well that season was received... probably not.
- Brookside: In its final months, the writers had a drug dealer named Jack Michaelson show up and later get lynched in the last ever episode. It was a Take That against Michael "controller of Channel 4, as opposed to the Moonwalk guy" Jackson, who had cancelled the show. The finale ended with the longest-serving character giving a thinly veiled rant about TV and society, before vandalizing the titular "Brookside Close."
- 30 Rock has given us the Show Within The Show MILF Island, which is basically a gigantic spoof of Survivor that takes Lowest Common Denominator to new lows. Coincidence that Survivor comes on at the same time as 30 Rock and regularly slaughters it in the ratings?
- 30 Rock has also been happy to dance on the corpse of Studio 60, most notably in their parody of the infamous episode which features Timothy Busfield's Director touring the studio with a writer from the "golden age." (This episode also included the horribly NAR Mish line, "Your brother is standing in the middle of Afghanistan!") 30 Rock cast Tim Conway as an aged and irrelevant old hand from 30 Rock's past, being led around by Kenneth the Page, while Conway spouts such lines as "We called that the Jew room!" in reference to the writers' room.
- The Daily Show hands out TakeThats on a regular basis, most memorably when host Jon Stewart was invited onto the CNN political op-ed show Crossfire, as a really, really ill-judged ratings grab. Stewart announced right off the top that he was no-one's 'monkey', and proceeded to demonstrate by spending the entire hour attacking the hosts, accusing them of of irrelevance, partisan hackery, and just generally a complete lack of journalistic integrity. He wound up by calling one of the hosts a 'dick' to his face. Not entirely coincidentally, Crossfire was cancelled a few months later.
- Law and Order: Criminal Intent features as a recurring character an obnoxious, loudmouthed, blond cable news anchor named "Faith Yancy", which the writers no doubt thought was brilliantly subtle.
- One episode of Big Wolf On Campus featured a Werewolf-Slayer named "Muffy". Three guesses who she's supposed to be poking fun at.
- In another episode, they poke fun at The Lost Boys. And, who was the special guest of that episode? None other than Corey Haim.
- The BBC's consumer affairs magazine Watchdog, having continued to receive complaints about a garage that had featured in an earlier series, sent researchers around in one of those speaker-equipped cars used in election campaigns. They parked outside and played through the speaker the Watchdog presenter Nicky Campbell's performance of "Edelweiss" from The Sound Of Music, which had featured in a celebrity talent show earlier in the year and for all his evident enthusiasm and love of the song wasn't very good. This troper doesn't recall whether or not the garage owner got the hint.
- In the season three premier of Heroes, Sylar is examining Claire's brain to gain its ability. Claire asks "Are you going to eat my brain?" and Sylar responds with "Eat your brain? That's disgusting!". This could be seen as a Take That to fans who believed that Sylar acquired people's powers by eating their brains. That the fans had been pretty much convinced of this by what they saw onscreen — including a major season-long plot arc — seems to be beside the point.
Film
- B-movie Laserblast, about a white trash teenager who gets a laser gun that works like the One Ring, featured the main character randomly blowing up a Star Wars billboard and laughing about it. Everybody saw Laserblast, right? Ya know, outside of Mystery Science Theater 3000...
- A CBS Made For TV Movie had thin analogues of the entire cast of Desperate Housewives eaten by a shark. Really.
- One of the opening scenes of Armageddon has a dog chewing on a toy Godzilla. The remake of Godzilla was another big blockbuster the same summer.
- One of the tidal wave scenes from Deep Impact shows the water wiping out an offshore oil drilling rig, which was a Take That against Armageddon. Armageddon didn't consider Deep Impact enough of a threat to Take That; as mentioned above, they took their shot at Godzilla instead.
- In Space Jam (produced by Warner Brothers), Daffy Duck suggests that they call their basketball team "The Ducks". Bugs' response: "What kind of Mickey Mouse organization would call their team the Ducks?" Besides using "Mickey Mouse" as a pejorative term, this could be considered a slam against both the film The Mighty Ducks (produced by Disney, and with D3 being released earlier that year, hmm...) and the actual hockey team The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (owned by Disney).
- "Mickey Mouse" is an actual phrase (according to one dictionary), meaning "petty". This could of course be considered a Take That in itself...
- The original Evil Dead showed a torn poster of The Hills Have Eyes in the background of one scene. Bruce Campbell reveals in the DVD commentary that Sam Raimi intended it as a sly dig at Wes Craven's film, as if to say: "If you thought that was scary..." Craven responded goodnaturedly, by having
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