History Main / IndecisiveParody

* Website/TVTropes: The RealLife tropes page can't seem to decide whether to pretend that reality is a [[UsefulNotes/{{Television}} TV show]], an [[MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame MMORPG]], or a TabletopRPG, or whether to simply list examples of tropes occurring in reality. As examples on said page can change drastically in style DependingOnTheWriter, there may never be a unified vision for that page.

* This is how the ''WebVideo/GameGrumps'' feel about ''[[WesternAnimation/TheGarfieldShow The Garfield Show: Threat Of The Space Lasagna]]''. With such an utterly ludicrous premise, that is lasagna aliens (which look and sound as stereotypically Italian as humanly possible) coming to Earth in an oven-themed starship and attempting to "stop Garfield from eating their Earth brethren" by hypnotizing mice to do their dirty work, they feel there's no way the people who made it don't get how silly it is and aren't making fun of the show. However, the game itself doesn't seem even remotely self-aware and consists of a collection of very mundane "cat vs mice" minigames that play like your most averagely mediocre UsefulNotes/{{Shovelware}} minigame compilation, and are in fact so unrelated to the alien plot that you could remove it completely and the games would still make sense since they all only involve mice either stealing food or pestering the cat. So in the end they're left utterly baffled by the tone of the game and can't figure out if it was meant to be a parody or not.

* The prologue of the freeware VisualNovel ''Ristorante Amore'' was meant to be a parody/deconstruction of [[RomanceGame otome]] (i.e. girl-oriented romance game genre) stereotypes (ex: clumsy and not-too-bright heroine, NiceGuy and bad boy love interests, AlphaBitch who only exists as a romantic complication for the heroine, etc.) with the post-prologue part revealing that the "prologue" was only a ShowWithinAShow with the characters' actors having vastly different and less stereotypical personalities. However, a combination of the prologue actually being relatively well-written, the lack of overt parodic jokes causing the prologue to feel not all that different from other straight-up otome games, and several visual novel websites categorizing it as an otome game in spite of the majority of the game having a male protagonist, led many a player to not realize the prologue was intended to be a parody and become genuinely disappointed when the HalfwayPlotSwitch to a male protagonist occurred.

* The same could be said for the original ''TabletopGame/WarHammer40000'' compared to many recent source materials and other media, which either showed an ambiguous blend of comedic tones with more serious tones, or went full serious for dramatic or epic purposes. The problem is that the original work was a parody of fascism and totalitarian regimes, with clear over the top extremizations of archetypes such as the glorification of war, or absolute purity of ideas and bloodlines, to show how pointless they are, and how behind a veil of propaganda there is only suffering, tragedy, and stupidity. The initial approach made them look obviously silly and ridiculous. If we remove the ridiculousness, though, we have a set of TemplarKnight space warriors that talk about glory, war, and purity, which sound close to real fascism values. Even when only theoretically positive values are shown, such as duty, cameraderie, resiliance, we are still talking about a diluted and toned down version of those zealot space marines, engaged in eternal war against unredeemable enemies that exist for the sole purpose of being enemies, and whose negative traits such as xenophobia become [[JustifiedTrope justified]] because of the context (imagine a fiction work that portrays some members of the SS troops only with positive attributes while defeating demons, it would look strange at best). This inevitably attracted far right gamers into the franchise and stirred up controversies about WH40k memes used to promote right wing politicians or communities harshly discussing about "wokeness" in the lore. This led the developers at Game Workshop to issue statements that hatred is to be confined in the fiction, and they do not want hate speech or intolerant values be promoted at their events or tournaments.

* ''Manga/AoChanCantStudy'' pokes fun at the {{Ecchi}} genre: main character Ao is a total pervert and imagines her relationship with her love interest will proceed in exactly the way it would in an erotic novel, but [[WrongGenreSavvy she doesn't realize she's in a shoujo romance]] and [[ChasteHero he's too pure to do anything like that with her anyways]], resulting in her failing to read the mood and making things even more awkward thanks to her dirty imagination running wild. Then again, the manga does have its fair share of {{Fanservice}}, making it look like it's trying to have its cake and eat it too.

* ''Literature/MyInstantDeathAbilityIsSoOverpowered'' meant to parody Isekai genre in a [[DeconstructiveParody deconstructive]] way, by having the protagonist's ridiculous One-Hit Kill ability and the antagonistic Sages and gods tendency to treat the universe like it's a sandbox game, but most events in the story (such as Yogiri's past, Theodisia's story, the nature of Yogiri's existence and power, [[spoiler: the brutality of Ayaka Shinozaki in her revenge, and Sage Sion's gradual loss of bodily functions followed by her assistant being targeted as well due to her refusal/inability sending the class back home]]) is genuinely played for horror or drama.

* ''LightNovel/MyInstantDeathAbilityIsSoOverpowered'' meant to parody Isekai genre in a [[DeconstructiveParody deconstructive]] way, by having the protagonist's ridiculous One-Hit Kill ability and the antagonistic Sages and gods tendency to treat the universe like it's a sandbox game, but most events in the story (such as Yogiri's past, Theodisia's story, the nature of Yogiri's existence and power, [[spoiler: the brutality of Ayaka Shinozaki in her revenge, and Sage Sion's gradual loss of bodily functions followed by her assistant being targeted as well due to her refusal/inability sending the class back home]]) is genuinely played for horror or drama.