Good Parodies

We have seen cartoons parody various forms of pop culture. Sometimes, it seems that the creators have never seen the thing they are making fun of.

However, there are the parodies that actually work because you can tell the writers have seen more than the trailers, commercials, and/or print ads. A good example of this is Super Strong Warner Siblings, an Animaniacs parody of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I can tell Paul Rugg (the writer of the short) actually sat down and watched a few episodes of the show because that would explain the inclusion of the villians' bad lip sync, the Warners being absolute goody goods and saying "Right!" every 5 seconds, and the never ending guitar soundtrack.

Can anyone else think of cartoons that had good parodies?

Oh, yeah... "Super Strong Warner Siblings." One of the better toons from the Kids WB period. ("Here, have a fat free yogurt.")

On the same WB cartoon token, "Toby Danger" from Freakazoid is a great parody of Jonny Quest, even getting some of the same actors who portrayed the characters! The animation and character designs look very identical to the show it's parodying, and it all combines to make one of the 90s WB toons' funniest moments.

That one was so good, it looped back into Jonny Quest. In one episode of the New Adventures, Race has to be restrained from throwing a barrel at the monster.

On that note, The Venture Bros.

I'm also kind of surprised they got away with having the Race Bannon parody say "Heads up, you heathen monkeys!" ...which was one of the things they had to cut out of the show it was parodying on DVD!

Freakazoid also did a parody of Gargoyles called "Lawn Gnomes." It's lost on me on how much of a relationship it has with the show it's parodying.

Oh, and another good Animaniacs parody - "Hearts of Twilight," which manages to skewer Apocalypse Now and The Day The Clown Cried, and in such a way that even if you haven't seen the movie, you can laugh at it.

edited 1st Jun '14 9:40:28 AM by Aldo930

I'll have to try to watch those episodes of Freakazoid again. I think I found Toby Danger more baffling than funny, even though I had heard of Jonny Quest. The lawn gnomes thing was also kind of baffling until I thought about it later: "Maybe it was trying to parody Gargoyles, because of the come-to-life deal?" The actual episodes about Freakazoid probably had wider appeal for using straight-up trope jokes.

I thought of another one. "Bat's All, Folks" from Tiny Toon Adventures with the first appearance of Batduck. They could have just referenced the then recent Tim Burton Batman movie and nothing else. Instead, it references a lot of the mythos. When Plucky is trying out different costumes, we get Golden Age, Adam West and Dark Night Returns before he settles on the standard one. It should came as no surprise that Paul Dini and Bruce Timm worked on this.

Edit: Also, in the Dark Night Returns scene, Montana Max is dressed like a Mutant and there is grafitti says "Who Watches the Watchmen?" Gotta love comic-ignorant censors.

edited 4th Jul '14 5:44:22 PM by DS9guy