In the UK, Mars had a popular advert for Milky Way that involved an (anthropomorphised) blue car racing a red car. A year or two later they revamped their campaign by remaking the same advert...but now with blue and red spaceships racing IN SPACE!
Strong Sad: But why are they in space? There's no reason for them to be in space!
Strong Bad: On the contrary, my dear Fatson. There is every reason for them to be in space!
Bonus Stage started being set "But They're In Space" at the end of episode 50 and on.
Web Comics
Stage-Select subcomic Here is a Questiondiscussed this for one strip, suggesting the phenomenon of this trope in the 1960's was due to the excitement of the space race. Then the money grubbing author decides to hop on the bandwagon and reformatted the comic into - you guessed it - Here is a Question◊ IN SPACE! A mild Rage Against the Authorlater◊, the comic returned to normal.
Starslip is an art museum strip IN SPACE, and its characters know it. They drink "space grog," try not to get "behind space-schedule," and shout "GOOD SPACE HEAVENS!" when surprised.
The OCR Physics A level in England. A levels have two sections; AS and A2. When asked what was covered in A2, this troper's teacher replied "It's basically AS module one IN SPACE."
This sort of premise has been seen in venture capital investing, in which it becomes shorthand to describe some new idea as "X for Y" where X is some preexisting thing and Y is some new demographic. (For example, "Groupons for Moms.") Venture capitalist Ethan Kurzweil has written an article decrying this tendency as lazy and possibly detrimental to creativity.
