An animated parody show created by Warner Bros. Animation, based on the iconic humor magazine Mad. Much like the magazine, Mad the TV series presents parodies on anything and everything. Each parody is rendered in a different style of animation, and few of the sketches last for more than a minute. Also, you get animated Spy vs. Spy and Don Martin shorts. Basically, it's either a less line-crossing version of Robot Chicken with a little bit of KaBlam! or MADtv if it stuck to the source material for longer than three seasons, was 15 minutes long, had more animated sketches than live-action sketches, and didn't feel like an Alternate Company Equivalent of Saturday Night Live.It premiered on Cartoon Network on September 6, 2010, right after the premiere of Regular Show. It came back for what was intended to be a second season, according to The Other Wiki, premiering on February 8, 2011. However, it was later recatagorized into Season 1 and the actual second season premiered in August 22, 2011.This show is not to be confused with the FOX sketch show MADtv, though, according to The Other Wiki, MAD is actually the revived and revamped version of MADtv said to come after its 2009 cancellation.Visit the show's website here.
"2 Broke Powerpuff Girls" gives us a twofer, reprising their roles are Tara Strong as Bubbles and Tom Kane as Professor Utonium (presumably, he's the narrator of the sketch) and Him.
Tara Strong also appeared quite prominently in "My LittleWar Horse", going so far as to advertise her appearance ahead of time on Twitter. The pony she played as had a striking resemblance to Twilight Sparkle.
Buzz: And Julia Stiles, you were there too! ...And then you really weren't in anything after that, which is weird, because you were great in 10 Things I Hate About You...
Animated Adaptation: In a sense; some of the jokes are culled from the magazine itself.
Art Shift: Various animation styles are used, just like its magazine counterpart.
Spy vs. Spy has it: the animation ranges from ink scribble style, clean Flash animation, and in the most 2nd season: claymation.
Sometimes the style even resembles shows like KaBlam! and El Tigre.
Black Comedy: There is a rather depressing short skit depicting Lightning McQueen being crushed in a car crusher because his transmission was ruined. They didn't care about the fact that he could talk, he was still junk.
Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: "2012 Dalmatians" has the president inform that the dalmatians are landing "on the ocean, on land, and at ocean land". As he says the last part the scene cuts to a dalmatian landing on Sea World and switching patterns with a performing orca (presumably Shamu or one of her children).
Captain Ersatz: Normally used for obvious reasons, even with their own network's shows. An interesting version though, while all of the characters have different designs and/or colors, they still keep their names. This is the opposite of many of the magazine's parodies, where the characters appear the same but have their names replaced with PunnyNames.
One Scooby-Doo segment averts this with the characters in their correct colors and outfits. This is because Warner Bros. owns the rights to it. Same goes for DC Comics characters.
Clip Art Animation: Many of the sketches that parody movies and TV shows use this kind of animation.
Continuity Nod: One of the poster's on the werewolf's wall in the Club Moon skit is of Grey's In Anime.
In "Batman Family Feud," the dead guy from CSI-Carly appears as a member of the Berkel family.
In "Pirates of the Neverland: At Wit's End," the two aliens from the second episode sketch about one of the aliens posting an allegedly obscene message on his SpaceNook wall can be seen in the background when Captain Jack Sparrow realizes he's lost.
In The X-Men Games, Professor Xavier is seen watching Ay Carly before his TV loses signal.
Episode Potions 11; Moves Like Jabba had a skit on the Easter bunny hiding eggs, which resulted the Johnson family not being able to find them. The news intro for episode Addition Impossible; New Girl had the same family trying to find the eggs, this time gagging from the rotting smell because the bunny sill won't reveal their locations.
Couch Gag: The "Breaking News" segment, which actually contains not one, but TWO gags. First is the news story itself, and in season two:
Anchor: We return you to MAD, already in... the middle of a Couch Gag.
Duck!: Given that the premise of "Duck" was a Chuck parody with a duck as the title character, the use of this trope was inevitable.
Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Parodied in a short skit where Ming-Ming, who is in a spelling bee, spells 'serious' 'S-E-W-I-O-U-S', to which Elmuh Fudd, who is the judge, tells her she's cowwect.
Everything's Better with Monkeys: When monkeys take over for the writers of the show, you get an entire episode dedicated to monkeys and apes.
In the "S'up" episode, in a gag where a shoe store owner tries to convince an alligator that he's not giving her alligator shoes, a pair of pots can be briefly seen behind a sign saying "Crocks".
Rossi's Facebook page in "Criminal Minecraft" includes Garcia's status saying she "can't wait until 1.9".
Ho Yay:invoked Happens a lot between Edward and Jacob. For instance, one skit had them discover that they turned themselves into vampire-werewolves from biting each other. They walk off like best buds and leave Bella alone in the woods.
Incredibly Lame Pun: Pretty much every title of ever short. Examples include Yu-Gi-Bear, Ko-Bee Movie, and examples listed on this page. Even gets lampshaded in the title sequence for Law & Ogre, where the narrator admits they just did it for the title.
Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Take away the Stop Motion visuals of "Flammable", and it sounds like Katy Putty is just singing some low self-esteem metaphors that make as much sense as those Katy Perry used in "Firework":
Do you ever feel like you're not really real, just a puppet doll dealt a lousy deal?
Level Grinding: "Final Brantasy", the cereal that tastes better the more you level up by eating it. It starts off tasting like burnt rubber at level 1, then unburnt rubber at level 2, then makes its way to tasting like sand at level 45.
Memetic Mutation: In-universe, the dogs use internet memes to wage war on the Thundercats in 'ThunderLOLcats.'
Moon Logic Puzzle: An entire bit based on this and rebus equations put together.
Ninja: According to the fourth episode, they sometimes infest your apartment like roaches.
They also shoot spitwads and throwing stars at the chalkboard while the teacher's back is turned, and disappear when he turns around to get one student in trouble. Batman does this later on, and the kid just accepts that he can't get out of it.
Nosebleed: The bully in "Naru210" gets one from Naruto's Sexy no Jutsu.
Nose Nuggets: In one skit, a man tied up at a bank uses his snot to douse a stick of dynamite. This was adapted from an Al Jaffee gag that appeared in the mag.
One of Us: With constant references to Internet memes, Video Games, and cartoons from the 1980s and 1990s abound, it's VERY easy to assume that the writers are this.
Seinfeld Is Unfunny: In-universe; in the Cloverfield parody, Cliffordfield, Big Bird screams, "Don't let him get me! I'm a one-of-a-kind children's character!" When Clifford crushes him, Big Bird turns into SpongeBob SquarePants and groans, "Okay, I see your point," implying that the children of today would probably look at Big Bird as a SpongeBob knock-off, when really it's the other way around.
Self-Deprecation: MAD Magazine regularly makes jokes about how lame, childish, moronic, and unfunny their magazine is, so the writers of the cartoon continue the apparent tradition.
The Wall-E-Nator considers MAD the biggest producers of garbage.
Occurs again in the Stinger at the end of "Da Grinchy Code" — it turns out every present but a stack of MAD magazines were taken.
The ending of the "Cowboys & Alien Force" sketch. "It's a mash-up of two genres; they do it on MAD all the time!"
Hell, the news anchorman, RichardSuccar, does this all the time.
Scuttle the seagull brings Ariel some trash when she moves into a new apartment. One of them is a fork, and the other is a copy of MAD Magazine, which he thinks might be used for cleaning the toilet.
Shout Out: Someone on the staff is obviously a big Pixar fan. "Trans-Bore-Mores" contained cameos from Remy, WALL•E and Mater. "2012 Dalmatians" featured a cameo from Carl (Up) — andUp was parodied as S'Up (in which Carl has to deal with the cast of Jersey Shore flying with him instead of an earnest yet irritating Boy Scout and his dog), and "Wall-E-Nator" (obviously) turns WALL-E into a feelingless robot on the hunt for trash. There was also a skit on rejected Toy Story toys.
And it's not just Pixar, either; the main characters from Ice Age make a cameo in "Star Blecch", and Scrat shows up near the end of episode five. Also, Flint from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs has appeared three times. "Trans-Bore-Mores" also had a brief mention of The Iron Giant.
On another occasion, Danny Phantom appeared once, albeit with green hair.
Finn and Jake appear in Malcolm in the Middle Earth.
Coraline did too, as one of the people falling out of the overturned wardrobe.
Haruhi Suzumiya appears in Yo Gaga Gaga, but with pink hair.
The ThunderLOLCats sketch is filled to the brim with references to "stupid overused memes". In addition, the cats' firewall is breached by a horde of Creepers, and one of the figures on the engraving at the start seems to bear a resemblance to one of the wizards from Magicka.
ThunderLOLcats not only references the LOLCats meme, but also Minecraft ("That's a niccccccce wall you've got there..."), "I'M FIRIN' MAH LAZER!", Weebl & Bob ("I'm a Narwhal! The Jedi of the sea!"), My Little Pony, Bunchies, a spectacular replication of the Internet Trollface, Angry Birds, 'Weegee, the Not Even Doom Music cat, Nyan Cat, and numerous other internet memes with a striking degree of accuracy.
Shown Their Work: Admittedly it's for pop culture, but the amount of detail they put into most of the parodies is pleasantly surprising. They do miss the mark now and then (see Shallow Parody) but the majority of the sketches show that they do look into what they're parodying.
Also, to the pilot/special, and also the FOX sketch show MADtv, whose producer promised that the show would be revived and revamped on cable when news hit that the FOX incarnation of the show would be canceled in 2009.
The Stinger: After the credits, they do a few more seconds of a sketch from earlier on (most of which are edited out in reruns to make room for the closing credits and to get to the next show as quickly as possible).
Stock Sound Effects: "ArThor" had one segment that referenced Donkey Kong. The sound effects used were, appropriately enough, the ones from the Atari2600 port of the game.
Surreal Theme Tune: Some random man and what sounds like a group of kids babbling "Hey yabba, boy yamma, Mad!" + a kazoo and Jew's harp = The MAD theme.
Another bash on Ke$ha: On "Pirates of the Neverland: At Wit's End," Captain Hook tells Captain Jack Sparrow that the crocodile who always chases him makes the most horrible noise — "tick tock." Not the clock noise; "that annoying Ke$ha song" ("TiK ToK"), followed by the crocodile opening his mouth and a screwed-up, sound-alike version of "TiK ToK" starts playing.
Whoever wrote The Social Netjerk obviously has a bitter dislike for Regular Show:
Mordecai: You know what I like about you, Sean? You make me seem funny.
They don't seem to care for a lot of other Cartoon Network shows, particularly noticeable in The Watcher's speech to Captain America in "AvengerTime".
Star Blecch had several lines about how Star Trek stole a whole bunch of ideas from Star Wars.
uGlee was pretty much a whole Musical Episode about how Glee's premise of teens singing in high school is no different than the premises for High School Musical, JONAS, Hannah Montana, Victorious and Fame.
Hell, during Wall-E-Nator, the MAD producers poke fun at themselves.
The show also has a lot of potshots at the Marmaduke movie.
They seem to really hate Kristen Stewart (and Twilight, though that's more of an acceptable target than Kristin Stewart), as they're always showing her as a really unhappy chick.
Also, in Pokémon Park, the following lines: "[Digimon Island] is the same, only more complicated and less fun." "Oh, like Yu-Gi-Oh Island"
In "Ko-Bee Movie" Kobe discovers he has a human counterpart and wants to take action. An Exbee of Jerry Seinfeld suggests taking him to court, however Kobee says it would be very boring for a movie. At the end, Jerry Seinfeld Bee comments on how Ko-Bee Movie was a much better movie than Bee Movie.
"Super '80s" has a scene of Seth Green trying to crash a truck into a train full of 1980s pop culture icons, exclaiming, "If I can't have the '80s, no one will!" Later, one of the children refers to Madonna as the person Lady Gaga spent her career copying (then added that Russell Brand stole his act of being a comic weirdo from Weird Al Yankovic.). Also, an interviewee who looks like Michael Ian Black on I Love The '80s sadly comments that shows like I Love The '80s count as television. Finally, when the '80s icons go back to where they belong, they fly to Steven Spielberg's house, because his career would die without such retro figures as Indiana Jones.
Kung Fu Blander is chock full of Take Thats at things like Kung Fu Panda (outright saying by its main character no less that their movies are getting worse), and Mr. Popper's Penguins (criticizes its Aesop and the alleged wrong turn in Jim Carrey's career).
In "Smallville: Turn Off the Clark", there's a huge amount of take that (against Smallville, Julie Taymor) and Shown Their Work (the references to the show like Dr. Fate's future seeing, Clark's dad coming back to life, Brainiac having the model of Cartoon Brainiac and the coloring of the main comic's Brainiac.
The internet itself, in the ThunderLOLcats skit.
The amnesiac protagonist of Cowboys & Alien Force says he wishes he could forget the last Indiana Jones movie.
Jersey Shore takes quite a few beatings itself. They all get tricked into falling to their deaths in an Up parody, but also in Jersey Thor, where Thor confuses their hairstyles with elaborately styled horned helmets that his own family often wears back in Asgard. Also, in a "Celebrities Without Their Makeup" segment, When you remove King Kong's makeup, you get Snooki.
"Captain American't" has Colonel Philips ask Dr. Erskine to improve the movie's CGI after completing the Super Soldier project.
MAD seems to have something against Cars. Every other time it's referenced, Lightning Mcqueen or Mater get killed off for no apparent reason.
Transformation Is a Free Action: in "Money Ball Z", Goku takes an exceptionally long time to power up, and the pitcher decides to wait for him to finish. When Vegeta steps up to bat and powers up next, everyone, including the team coach, manager, sporting agents, and audience all take up some other activity to help pass the time, including watching the entirety of Peter Jackson's King Kong.
X Meets Y: This show in general can be described as KaBlam! meets Robot Chicken. (The crew from both shows created the show)
In-show, a lot of the parody titles (read: the parody titles that don't childishly make fun of what's being parodied, like Are You Karate Kidding Me, Avaturd, uGlee, and The Social Netjerk) are combos of two or more TV shows, movies, cartoon series, etc. Some examples:
Arthor: Arthur and Thor, with the titular character of Rango thrown in as well (since Thor, the Russell Brand remake of Arthur, and Rango came out in theaters around the same time)
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