Basic Trope: Some form of entertainment takes a potshot at some other form of entertainment.
- Straight: Alice and Bob, a sitcom, makes fun of the plotlines of Troperz, another sitcom, in one episode.
- Exaggerated:
- Every episode of Alice and Bob is a potshot at one thing or another (usually whatever was the "new hotness" on the news that week).
- "Take That!" Tit-for-Tat — Alice and Bob and Troperz make a succession of jokes about how the other show sucks, rinse and repeat until each show's respective fans start killing each other on the streets Mad Max-style or the communications authority fines them for inappropriate behavior or something.
- Characters from both shows hop between each others' shows to try and outdo the other one.
- Downplayed:
- Alice and Bob do two jokes against Troperz, but that's it.
- Alice and Bob references it with only a minor Take That!
- Justified:
- Alice and Bob and Troperz air on different networks but compete for the same demographic, so there's naturally some rivalry between the producers.
- The producers of the two shows are friends who enjoy a little good-natured ribbing now and again.
- Inverted:
- They genuinely compliment Troperz.
- They mock Troperz, but in a way that's clearly done out of love.
- Self-Deprecation
- Biting-the-Hand Humor
- Shout-Out
- Subverted: Bob makes fun of Troperz, but Alice tells him his opinion is dumb.
- Double Subverted: Then Alice is shown to have bad opinions, making Bob's one to be correct.
- Parodied: After a while, Alice and Bob starts to make fun of how much it makes fun of other shows.
- Zig-Zagged: At the end of one episode, Bob insults Troperz. He apologizes in the next episode ... then insults Troperz AGAIN. He apologizes at the end of that episode. He's sorry for real.
- Averted: Alice and Bob doesn't take potshots at the competition.
- Enforced: "Hey, we're competing with Troperz, so let's make fun of them all the time ... that'll show them!"
- Lampshaded: "Wow, we've been making fun of them a lot, haven't we?"
- Invoked: A writer from Troperz takes a potshot at Alice and Bob, intentionally causing a war of Take Thats.
- Exploited: The network airing Alice and Bob decides to use the war to boost its ratings.
- Defied: Despite many opportunities to do so, the writers of Alice and Bob decide to take the high road and avoid making fun of their competitors.
- Discussed: "If we were characters on a TV sitcom, how would we while away our spare time?" "Ridiculing our inferior, yet inexplicably more popular, competition?" "My thoughts exactly."
- Conversed: "I used to like Alice and Bob, but they aren't even trying to come up with original and creative ideas. They're just jealous that Troperz has become the highest-rated show in Tropendom and want to cut the competition down rather than build themselves up. That's not a substitute for being funny!"
- Implied: Larry, a character on Troperz, mentions feeling deeply offended when he saw last night's new episode of Alice and Bob.
- Deconstructed:
- The fans of Troperz aren't laughing. The producers of Troperz decide to sue and they win in court. Alice and Bob is cancelled. (The last episode ends with one of the main characters saying "FUCK YOU, TROPERZ!" while blowing up a statue of the protagonist of Troperz.)
- Alice and Bob quickly Jumped the Shark after the episode airing the episode making fun of Troperz, making them the target of audiences' mockery instead.
- Reconstructed: The fans of Troperz find it very funny and start regularly tuning in, building a new audience.
- Played for Laughs:
- The writers of Alice and Bob cook up 3,718 different Take Thats at Troperz (72 of which are aired), and the producers of Troperz notice none of them.
- The Take That joke that appears in Alice and Bob is noted In-Universe to be weak, e.g.:Alice: So Troperz had J. J. Abrams as a head writer for a season…
Bob: ["The Star Wars sequel trilogy sucks" joke.]
Alice: Calling that "flogging a dead horse" implies there is anything left of the horse worth flogging anymore.
- Played for Drama: A group of fans of Troperz beat up the writers of Alice and Bob for making fun of their favorite show. This starts a literal war between Alice and Bob and Troperz. As the conflicts between the two shows begin to increase, the networks airing Alice and Bob and Troperz start taking desperate measures to keep the peace, all of which fail.
- Played for Horror: The "Troperz sucks" gag involves the protagonists of Alice and Bob charging into the set of Troperz to Rape, Pillage, and Burn, literally and gruesomely, with no real attempt to censor it. The reaction from all of those who see the episode is "Why the hell did they think that would be funny?" We are then either revealed that the writers were looking for maximum shock value for the sake of the point (or publicity, no matter how allegedly bad)… or they are psychos literally Running the Asylum one bad day away from doing this by themselves.
You probably need a link right here to take you back to Take That!, don't you?
