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Approval of God

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"Apocalyptica, we love you boys!"
James Hetfield, on their performance of Metallica music with him as the guest vocal.

Some creators get and accept the presence of a fan work, adaptation or a parody of their work. After all, there are creative fans who are willing to make anything based upon a work they love. Also, there are some other creators who not only accept such works existing but also enjoy the fan material and sometimes even showcase it to other fans.

While not everything that the creator would enjoy would become Ascended Fanon, some works, ranging from fan art to song parodies and fan films, would be good enough to catch the attention of creators, or those involved in the source material. Not only could the creators outright state their enjoyment for the fan material, but they can even link that work to share with other fans. Sometimes such works can become Ascended Memes.

Compare with Creator-Preferred Adaptation, where a creator dubs an adaptation to be superior to the original. Also compare Ascended Fanon, Promoted Fanboy, Official Fan-Submitted Content. Contrast Disowned Adaptation, Fanwork Ban, Sincerest Form of Flattery. Creators may even offer Parody Assistance. See also Rule 34 – Creator Reactions, which may or may not meet the creator's approval.


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Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • At one point, The California Milk Processor Board, the creators of the Got Milk? campaign, made a poster with their favorite spoofs of the slogan.
  • Anthony Sullivan is a fan of Jaboody Dubs and enjoys the parodies of his infomercial, even making a cameo appearance in one of Jaboody's non-dub videos. According to him, Billy Mays originally hated it because he thought they were making fun of him but over time, came around and enjoyed it once he realized that it is supposed to be affectionate.

    Anime and Manga 

    Comics 
  • Garfield Minus Garfield, a webcomic that takes Garfield strips and airbrushes out all the characters except Jon, leaving a strip about a crazy man who talks to himself. Jim Davis enjoyed it enough to approve publishing a book of the best ones. The book also features a section of unused strips created by Davis himself.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic the Comic – Online!, a fan-made continuation of the long-defunct Fleetway comic, received messages of support from most of the creative team behind the original publication, some of whom have since contributed artwork and consulted on storylines.
    • Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka has gone on to praise the IDW comics and Ian Flynn's writing, remarking that he understood the characters well and brought a great improvement to their emotions and dialogue. It helps that Sonic Team is a lot more involved with the IDW comics than they were with the previous Archie comics. Ian Flynn would eventually get to work on the scripts for Sonic Team's Sonic Origins and Sonic Frontiers, with the latter essentially canonizing the IDW comics through mentioning the IDW original character Tangle the Lemur.
  • Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons loved Harry Partridge's Saturday Morning Watchmen, feeling that the short showcased a lot of love for and knowledge of the property with its humour. Even more notably, Alan Moore — who is notorious for publicly disliking almost all adaptations of his work — has also given his seal of approval, giving Saturday Morning Watchmen the distinction of being only one of two adaptations Moore has endorsed (the other being an episode of Justice League which adapted "For the Man Who Has Everything").
  • Gary Larson wrote a The Far Side comic in which a female ape accused her mate of "doing more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp". As he related in his book "The Prehistory of the Far Side", Larson received a hostile letter from the Jane Goodall Society, threatening legal action over the strip. Shortly after that, he received a letter from the editors of National Geographic, who wanted to print the strip in an anniversary issue. When Larson explained his difficulties with the Jane Goodall Society, one magazine editor commented, "That doesn't sound like the Jane Goodall we know." After some research, they found out that Goodall enjoyed the strip and was not aware of the Society's actions against Gary Larson. Larson later met with Jane Goodall at her research facility in Mgombe. In his words, "Everything's cool."
  • Darin Calhoun, who wrote and colored The Wild, shared the Atop the Fourth Wall review done by Linkara in May 27, 2021. He himself acknowledges the comic is bad, but the artwork done by Josh Diffey was enough to make up for it.
  • Figment (Disney Kingdoms):
    • Tony Baxter, one of the creators of the original version of the source material, Journey into Imagination, approved of the comic and wrote the introduction to the trade collection of the first Figment series.
    • Ron Schneider, who played the original meet and greet version of Dreamfinder and did a few of the character's lines in the original Journey Into Imagination ride, also expressed approval of the comic in interviews.
  • Don Rosa was skeptical when Tuomas Holopainen of Nightwish approached him about a symphonic metal album inspired by The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, not being a rock fan; but Rosa was won over by the album being, in his words, "more symphonic than metal," and ended up contributing to the cover art of what became Music Inspired by the Life and Times of Scrooge.

    Eastern Animation 

    Film — Animation 
  • Heavy Metal: Richard Corben said the producers did a good job adapting his comics for the "Den" story, especially with John Candy playing the lead role.
  • How to Train Your Dragon: Cressida Cowell, when asked, showed no offence or anger at the differences the movie had from the original novel (tone, setup, etc.) — she acknowledged that it worked better for the new medium and that the story stood strong on its own despite not adapting the books' narrative more strictly.
  • Coraline: Neil Gaiman, the author of the original novel, outright encouraged creative liberties to be taken with the film during development and, by all accounts, was very pleased with the way the movie turned out.
  • Brian Boitano loved the South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut song "What Would Brian Boitano Do?", and his Twitter avatar is even his animated version from the movie.
  • Dav Pilkey has stated that he enjoyed Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie a lot, particularly praising how Mr. Krupp was much more fleshed out compared to the original.
  • Turning Red: Director Domee Shi has featured Turning Red fanart on her Instagram Stories, including multiple pieces of art shipping 4*Town members Aaron T. and Aaron Z.
  • William Steig, who wrote the original Shrek picture book, didn't expect to like the film adaptation, but was pleasantly surprised to find that it was even cruder than the book:
    Steig: It's vulgar, it's disgusting - and I loved it.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Many of the Rare employees who have worked on the original Donkey Kong Country games, including Steve Mayles, Kev Bayliss, David Wise, and Grant Kirkhope (though he was dissatisfied about not being credited for the DK Rap), have all shown their approval towards the film's incorporation of the Donkey Kong Country characters.

    Film — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • The authors of the Warrior Cats books enjoy the animations that fans have made - most notably, they've linked to SSS Warriors and AlliKatNya's "Gravity of Love" AMV.
  • Harry Potter:
    • J. K. Rowling has a section on her website to honor fansites who catalog her books, like Mugglenet or The Leaky Cauldron. She's also expressed that she wishes she had thought up the Shrunken Head on the Knight Bus in the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban film. She takes a "go ahead, I won't look" view toward fanfiction, though.
    • Rowling was more than happy with The Harry Potter Lexicon, a fan-made website that indexed everything in the Potterverse. But once the owner published it as a real book she sued because it was essentially the entire Harry Potter series as written by her only organized differently and with him as the purported author.
    • When asked if she'd seen it via Twitter, Rowling tweeted that she thinks the Harry Potter / Uptown Funk parody Dark Lord Funk is a work of genius.
  • George R. R. Martin was impressed by Russian artist Amok's amateur portraits of characters from A Song of Ice and Fire that he sent notes to make them more accurate and eventually commissioned him to make official A Song of Ice and Fire art. Especially notable as he's always taken a dim view of fanfiction.
  • James Riley, author of Half Upon a Time, regularly posts fan art he receives for the series on its official blog.
  • Tom Angleberger, author of the Origami Yoda series, frequently posts pictures of origami made by fans on his blog.
  • Randall Garrett showed E. E. "Doc" Smith the original version of "Backstage Lensman" at a convention. According to Garrett, Smith "laughed all through the convention," and even suggested one small but significant improvement note .
  • Nivek, one of the original writers of Player Two Start was the beta reader for the AVGN and Player Two Start Fusion Fic A Saga of Parallel Worlds, and approved of the AU.
  • In one of Villainess Level 99's Light Novel afterwords, the author mentions liking the manga adaptation's take on Alicia better than how he himself wrote her in the early chapters of the webnovel and light novel, which she dies in the former and Put on a Bus in the latter.
    I regret how I handled Alicia in the first volume. She didn't become a total villain like the Demon Lord or the god of evil, but she didn't get tossed into the Yumiella Comedy Realm like the Duke did either, so I feel like her arc ended up being half-baked.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The folks at 30 Rock loved the porn version of the show so much they had the actors playing essentially themselves in a porno Tracy Jordan was making to get back at Liz Lemon.
  • Someone drew a comic spoofing the average plot of an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Chris Meloni, a former star of the show, ordered a signed copy.
  • While Legend of the Seeker was on the air, a fan created a blog called "Gay for Kahlan", which recapped each episode with light-hearted jabs and playing up the Les Yay between Kahlan and Cara. The show's stars, Craig Horner and Bridget Regan, both said they and the crew loved it and would read it every morning on the way to set. After the show wrapped, the crew sent her a prop from the set as a thank you.
  • In 2008, a fan film of Star Trek was made, called Of Gods and Men. While the production is of similar quality to other fan-made films, this one is notable for featuring many Star Trek alumni as main characters in both familiar and new roles, and was directed by Tim Russ, who also played his Voyager role of Tuvok (who had previously been established to have been alive in the TOS era).
  • Saturday Night Live:
  • David Tennant saw Liam Dryden's video titled "David Tennant is Stalking Me" and sent him an email to let him know that he found it funny, later asking Liam to make a follow-up video alerting fans to online imposters.
  • Power Rangers:
    • Unlike Jason David Frank and Saban themselves, Austin St. John, Walter Emanuel Jones, Amy Jo Johnson, and Steve Cardenas like the Darker and Edgier short film Power/Rangers (Bootleg Universe), with Cardenas even making light of Rocky's rather severe Adaptational Villainy. Carla Perez, who played Rita Repulsa in American footage, reprised the role of Rita in it.
    • Musician PelleK did a metal remix of all of the theme songs from Mighty Morphin through the then-incumbent Megaforce. Haim Saban liked it enough to post it on the official Power Rangers YouTube channel and on iTunes as "Power Rangers Mega Mix".
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird is quite well-known for despising the female turtle Venus de Milo from the infamous live-action series Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, but the franchise's other co-creator Kevin Eastman stated in an interview after Nickelodeon's acquisition of the franchise that he actually likes Venus as a character and hopes for her to make a comeback someday.
  • The Canadian TV series Murdoch Mysteries significantly changes several characters from the way they were depicted in creator Maureen Jennings' original novels. Despite this, Jennings is a strong supporter of the show, is directly involved as a creative consultant, and has even directly written several episodes herself. Jennings has even said that star Yannick Bisson looks exactly the way that she always imagined Detective Murdoch in the novels, except for the mustache Jennings always gave him.
  • As with Murdoch Mysteries, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries takes quite a few liberties with the source material, but author Kerry Greenwood likes it anyway — particularly the casting of Essie Davis as Phryne. By Greenwood's own admission, she took one look at Davis' audition and went "Her! Her! I want her!"
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: While some were less than pleased over the mocking treatment their work received at the hands of the SOL crew, others were fans of the show and quite happy to have their works "featured" on the series.
    • "Cave Dwellers:" Ator actor Miles O'Keefe was quite pleased that a film he worked on received the MST3K treatment and requested Best Brains send him a copy of the episode.
    • Similarily, "Manos: The Hands of Fate" actors Jackey Neyman Jones (Debbie) and her father Tom Neyman (The Master) were both highly pleased to see Manos screened by Joel and the 'bots. They both thought had John Reynolds survived he would have liked the episode as well. Soon after the episode aired Jackey reached out to Best Brains as well to get a copy of the episode.
    • "Space Mutiny:" David Ryder actor Reb Brown was happy to discuss the episode when asked, and even on occasion recited some of the body builder names the crew bestowed upon him.
  • Early in its run, Spanish late-night show Buenafuente featured in its regular cast "Latin crooner" Miguel Chiclé, a parody of Michael Bublé. When the real Bublé was a guest on the show, he had a lot of fun with his impersonator.
  • Ryan Murphy apparently is quite fond of American Horror Story fans comparing American Horror Story: Apocalypse to Avengers: Infinity War, to the extent he used the caption “AHS: Infinity War” for this post.
  • Will Smith caught wind of the Darker and Edgier The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fan film "BEL-AIR" and loved it, prompting him to interview the writer/director of the short and eventually helped get a series based on the short greenlit for NBC Universal's Peacock streaming service, with Smith as executive producer.
  • MAD is constantly praised by the spoofed celebrities. Illustrator Tom Richmond in particular has a "Hall of Shame" of TV parodies that the depicted cast decided to autograph.
  • Elizabeth Olsen said that when she found video clips of a WandaVision-themed drag show, that was when she knew the miniseries was a hit.
  • invoked While Alan Moore is well known for disowning nearly all adaptations of his work, Dave Gibbons (the original artist of Watchmen) agreed to work with HBO on their Watchmen (2019) sequel miniseries, even being recognized as one of the miniseries' producers. Gibbons would also go onto to draw an illustration for a copy of the Bible young Jon Osterman was given in the episode "A God Walks Into Abar", and has also publicly sided with the miniseries on the highly contentious issue that white supremacists would view Rorschach as a role model. In contrast, Gibbons has been far less kind to Doomsday Clock.
  • Matt Frewer, the actor who played the original Max Headroom, was asked what he thought of the infamous Max Headroom incident. He found it flattering... and also was unsurprised that hackers would make use of such a character.
  • Tommy Lee has shown his approval for Pam & Tommy, saying it is a story that needed to be told in these days of questionable privacy, and struck a friendship with Sebastian Stan, who plays him in said miniseries.
  • Wednesday: Christina Ricci, who had previously played Wednesday in the '90s live-action films, gave her full approval to Jenna Ortega's performance as the character.
  • RuPaul's Drag Race: For the most part, celebrities impersonated on "Snatch Game" have reacted positively to their portrayals, with celebrities like Judge Judy and Carol Channing even getting video messages aired on the show showing their appreciation. Notably subverted in the cases of Jenny Bui and Patricia Quinn, who were very vocal about their disdain for Gia Gunn and Aiden Zhane (respectively) misrepresenting them.
  • The Nanny: In 2023, as Fran Drescher led SAG-AFTRA in the 2023 WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike against Hollywood studios pushing to use Artificial Intelligence, potentially putting thousands of actors and writers out of work, there was the meme "'The woman we all thought would lead the rebellion against the machines' and 'The woman who ended up leading the rebellion against the machines'", showing side-by-side pictures of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor from the Terminator films and Fran Drescher as Fran Fine from The Nanny, which Drescher herself shared on social media.
  • Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons were fully supportive of "Doctor Who" "The Star Beast" as an adaptation of their original comic, with their names being included in the opening credits and behind the scenes content showing how they were invited on-set to see their creations on TV.

    Music 
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic's parodies are sometimes met with this from other artists. This isn't surprising since he insists on seeking approval from them first before he records them, so they know what to expect. Of course, the fact that his interest in parodying an artist is a sure sign they've hit the big time helps ease things along.
    • The most notable exception was Coolio, who felt that "Gangsta's Paradise" was too serious and intense a song to be parodied, and was upset when "Amish Paradise" was released. Yankovic felt bad about it and had been incorrectly told that he had Coolio's approval. Eventually, Coolio got over it and gave Al a hug. As Al put it, "I doubt I'll be invited to Coolio's birthday party, but at least I don't have to wear a bulletproof vest to the mall anymore." For Coolio's part, he felt that denouncing Al for the parody was one of the biggest mistakes of his career and regretted it.
    • Don McLean has gone on record as saying that he and his children loved Al's "The Saga Begins" parody of American Pie so much that they've found themselves accidentally starting to sing the lyrics to Al's version during live performances.
    • Michael Jackson was a big fan and he enjoyed the parodies of his work. He also lent Al the set from the music video of "Bad" to shoot the music video for "Fat". In fact, Jackson was such a fan that he gave Al permission to spoof any of his songs in perpetuity but asked that he not record a parody of "Black and White" because he felt that its message was too important. Though Al did parody the song (his version is called "Snack All Night") and occasionally performs it live, he kept his promise and has never put it on any of his albums.
    • Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was incredibly flattered when Weird Al asked for permission to parody "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Al reports being incredibly nervous when he admitted that the lyrics were all about how indistinct and mumbly Cobain's vocals were, but Kurt loved the idea. The entire band reportedly laughed hysterically when they saw the video, and Cobain called Yankovic a "musical genius" in his journals. He even said that a Weird Al parody was when he knew the band had "made it".
    • Chamillionaire of "Ridin'" fame loved the parody "White and Nerdy" and even featured it on his MySpace page shortly after release. He was even impressed by Al's rapping abilities. And then he name-dropped "White and Nerdy" in the sequel, "Ridin' Overseas".
    • Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo congratulated him for "Dare to Be Stupid" and called it "the perfect Devo song". note 
    • When Yankovic approached Lady Gaga's management to spoof "Born this Way," he got turned down. Gaga herself heard about it, tore her management team a new one, and gave Yankovic a green light to spoof what he pleased. She even said that she saw the parody as a continuation of her original version.
    • James Blunt also approved when Yankovic remade Blunt's hit "You're Beautiful" as "You're Pitiful"... it was the label, Atlantic Records, who refused to allow Yankovic to release it on an album. Yankovic responded by releasing it as a freebie online, and getting the last laugh both in the "White and Nerdy" music video and in concert ever since.
    • The Presidents of the United States of America started performing their song "Lump" with the Forrest Gump quote ("And that's all I have to say about that") that finishes "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody "Gump".
    • On the flip side, Weird Al himself is very receptive to fan content. In fact, he has a list of his favorites on his website.
  • Country Music parodist Cledus T. Judd:
    • He has often gotten approval from the original artists on his parodies, also with some Parody Assistance (e.g., Brad Paisley playing lead guitar on "More Beaver", a parody of his own "Me Neither", or the director of Faith Hill's "This Kiss" video doing a shot-for-shot parody for "Christ-Mas").
    • Judd's parody of Garth Brooks' "In Another's Eyes", which he planned to parody as "In Another Size". Garth originally asked Judd not to parody it, but later changed his mind.
    • Luke Bryan loved Judd's swan song "Luke Bryan", a parody of "Blurred Lines" that poked fun at him.
  • Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes had cultivated relationships with many of the subsequent artists who cite her as an influence and often performed cover versions of their songs. Brian Wilson, Billy Joel, The Ramones, Eddie Money and Amy Winehouse are among the artists she had given personal approval.
    • In the case of Amy Winehouse, her idolization of Spector crosses straight into Follow the Leader, as she sought to emulate Spector's physical appearance as well as her singing style. Spector made a point to reach out to Winehouse and meet with her personally. Upon Winehouse's untimely death, Spector released a cover of "Back to Black" in tribute and also contributed to the biopic Amy.
    • With Eddie Money, offering her approval ended up reviving her career. Money looked to her for inspiration when writing "Take Me Home Tonight" (which interpolated The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" in the chorus) and ultimately ended up including her on the song as a guest vocalist. It became a massive hit and sparked a revival of interest in her life and career. Money later stated that he would have scrapped the song if Spector had declined to appear on it, as he had no intention of recording it with anyone else.
  • Despite her reputation as a serious, intense ballad singer, Céline Dion has a really good sense of humor and is really good at taking a joke. When SNL was doing their parody of her in the wake of Titanic, she thought it was so hilarious, she invited Ana Gasteyer to her show in New York, where she did her Celine Dion impression for the crowd. On another occasion, when promoting her French album Sans Attendre on TV, she invited another imitator, Véronique Dicaire, on stage.
  • Corey Taylor of Slipknot was asked what he made of "Psychosocial Baby", a mashup of the Slipknot song "Psychosocial" and "Baby" by Justin Bieber. Contrary to the opinions of many Slipknot fans, he loved it and found it hilarious.
  • None of The Beatles objected to The Rutles, and George Harrison liked the idea enough to produce and appear in the All You Need Is Cash mockumentary. John Lennon loved The Rutles so much that when their first film came out, he watched it almost nonstop on loan from the studio. When time was up, he very reluctantly gave the film back. Apparently, Paul McCartney was a little bit wary at first, but his wife Linda assured him that it was all right.
  • They Might Be Giants post many fan videos of their music on their Facebook page and website, among various other things. A popular flash for "Certain People I Could Name" garnered much attention from them.
  • Apocalyptica started out their career covering songs by Metallica on 4 cellos. Metallica liked their arrangements so much that they played with Apocalyptica playing music written by the former in arrangements done by Apocalyptica.
  • Beatallica, a band whose oeuvre consists entirely of Beatles/Metallica mashups (example songs: "The Thing That Should Not Let It Be" and "And Justice For All My Loving"), was aided in a minor legal dispute with Sony (who currently holds the rights to most of Beatles songs) by Lars Ulrich.
  • Bob Rivers parodied Joan Osborne's "One Of Us" into "What If God Smoked Cannabis". Osborne liked it so much, she covered the parody herself.
  • Michael Bublé loved Bad Lip Reading's parody of "Haven't Met You Yet": "Russian Unicorn". And Gotye tweeted the parody of his "Somebody That I Used To Know".
  • In an interview, Rebecca Black was asked which parody of "Friday" was her favorite, which was the Brock's Dub version.
  • When asked in a radio interview about his opinion of Time Lord rock band Chameleon Circuit, David Tennant said that "They're quite good, aren't they? It's like proper, decent music."
  • Taylor Swift tweeted her love for Walk Off the Earth's cover version of her song "I Knew You Were Trouble".
  • Taylor's reaction to Ryan Adams' cover album of her 1989 album, done in Adams' Alternative Country style has been extremely supportive and positive. She has been promoting in on her Twitter account as enthusiastically as with one of her own albums. note 
  • Barry Manilow reportedly enjoyed Ray Stevens' parody of him on "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow".
  • One Direction showed approval for fanfiction spoof cartoon The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction.
  • Voltaire apparently browses the AMV sections of YouTube and even told someone "Nicely done!!!!" (yes, with all the exclamation marks) on their AMV of his song Crusade.
  • Lorde thought South Park's parody of her (where she turns out to be Stan's dad Randy crossdressing as her) was pretty funny and even recorded a clip of herself going "ya ya ya, I am Lorde" just like Randy does.
  • The Tumblr blog "This Charming Charlie", combining Peanuts strips with lyrics from The Smiths, is another example of mixed reaction, garnering a cease-and-desist from Universal Music on behalf of Johnny Marr and praise from Morrissey. The two jointly hold the copyright to the band's catalogue, so they have to agree in order to pursue a claim. Since they don't, the site remains.
  • Perturbator reposted this Slam Remix of "Sexualizer". James Kent, the man behind Perturbator, is incredibly humble and tends to have this reaction to any and all fanworks of his stuff.
  • Bryan White who is responsible for the song, "God Gave Me You", was amazed how the song was used for GMA Network's variety noontime show Eat Bulaga for their "kalye-serye", AlDub, which shows the host Alden Richards' courtship to Yaya Dub (Maine Mendoza in Real Life) which is done by lipsynching various songs as a way of conversing each other and it is in split-screen.
  • Nine Inch Nails:
    • While Trent Reznor hesitantly gave Johnny Cash permission to cover "Hurt" at first, he describes hearing it for the first time felt as if Johnny Cash had stolen his girlfriend, and loved the legend's interpretation of the song.
    • Reznor has said good things about Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road", which samples a Nine Inch Nails banjo line, though he declined to appear in its music video feeling he didn't earn a spot there.
    • When it was announced that the 2020 'Cold And Black And Infinite North America' concert tour was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Reznor put a link on the official NIN site a fan-made concert film consisting of several shows from their 2018 tour, stating "HOW IN THE FUCK DID YOU PULL THIS OFF??"
  • Devo's cover of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is seen by The Rolling Stones as better than the original.
  • Paul Simon of Simon & Garfunkel gave his approval to Disturbed's cover of "The Sound of Silence" after they performed it on Conan.
  • Composer Alberto Ginastera gushed about Emerson, Lake & Palmer's adaptation of his work "Toccata", praising it as "diabolic" and saying that the band had "captured the essence of my music, and no one's ever done that before". Aaron Copland also liked the band's adaptations of "Hoedown" and "Fanfare for the Common Man". On the reverse side, Keith Emerson, who wasn't always thrilled with covers of his band's work (most likely because it's so difficult to play and few people have the chops to pull it off properly), praised Jordan Rudess' covers of ELP, most notably "Tarkus".
  • Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason gave praise to this video of a Brazilian keyboardist's Mondegreenified version of "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2" on his Facebook account, saying: "When you sound this good you don't need to know all the words..."
  • Rob Cantor of Tally Hall wrote a song that depicted Shia LaBeouf as a cannibalistic Serial Killer. Not only did he tweet about it, he made a cameo in the music video, applauding the actors on stage.
  • Dolores O'Riordan approved of American metal band Bad Wolves' cover of "Zombie" with updated lyrics highlighting how war never changes. She was even set to re-record the song with the band before her untimely death in January 2018. The band intends to donate proceeds from the song to her children, and the music video is dedicated to her.
  • Ariana Grande's response to The Late Late Show with James Corden's "thank u, next" spoof "thank u, jeff"? She went on Twitter and asked for the Jeff Goldblum scrapbook Corden flips through in the video — "it's for a friend. promise."
  • Sabaton:
  • BTS's heavy references to the book Jung's Map of the Soul in MAP OF THE SOUL: PERSONA (as well as the fandom's Wild Mass Guessing and analysis of the album based on the book) were very well received by the book's author, Murray Stein.
  • The Dutch EDM duo, Vicetone, find the use of their song, "Astronomia", in the dancing coffin meme very hilarious.
  • Chris Barnes tweeted about an acoustic cover of the Cannibal Corpse song "I Cum Blood", calling it "pure gold".
  • Charlie Puth gave cover artist Kurt Hugo Schneider a "Well done!" in the comments of his version of Puth's song "One Call Away".
  • When somebody on Twitter accused Olivia Rodrigo of plagiarizing Elvis Costello for her song "Brutal", Costello himself chimed in and defended Rodrigo while pointing out his own history of taking inspiration from other artists.
    This is fine by me, Billy. It's how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That’s what I did.
  • James Leyland Kirby, more often known as The Caretaker, is fully aware of the sudden memetic spread of his everywhere at the end of time project — a 6.5-hour long multi-album series intended to illustrate the effects of dementia, infamous for being a very stark and harrowing listen — including "The Caretaker Challenge" that spread in 2020 on TikTok where listeners would see how long they could endure the project before breaking down. Kirby is well aware of the criticisms his fans share of this phenomenon (many arguing it desensitizes a serious art piece and its serious subject matter), but he personally disagrees and has given the spread his blessing, as to him, it represents a widespread curiosity and willingness to engage with very intense and uncomfortable themes, especially among younger audiences unaware of the gravity of dementia.
  • In a Songfacts interview, Christopher Cross voiced his approval for a 1999 The Onion article that referenced his 1980 hit "Ride Like the Wind" wherein it's stated he finally got to the Mexican border.
  • When DJ Cummberbund did a remix of Earth, Wind & Fire's September with Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train, September's writer Allee Willis voiced approval.
  • Greg Lake from Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who sang lead on King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man", loved how Kanye West sampled the song in his single "Power", stating that it made the song sound fresh to modern audiences. In the last few years of his life, he always opened his solo shows with a version of "Schizoid Man" that incorporated almost two minutes of West's song.
  • Robert Plant famously hates Led Zeppelin's Signature Song "Stairway to Heaven." However the cover sung by Heart at the Kennedy Center Honors concert brought Tears of Joy to his face. Plant was also a fan of Dread Zeppelin, a band fronted by an Elvis Impersonator, which did reggae covers of Zeppelin songs.
  • David Bowie has said that astronaut Chris Hadfield's cover of "Space Oddity", recorded and filmed on the International Space Station itself, is the most poignant version of the song he's ever heard. He also had good words for the Langley Schools Music Project version of the song, feeling that the vocals of the Canadian schoolchildren added a Creepy Children Singing element that made it a bit of a Mind Screw.
  • In the 1970s, Frank Sinatra added the Beatles song "Something" to his regular concert repertoire, and tweaked the line "you stick around now, it may show" to "You stick around, Jack, she might show". George Harrison was initially apathetic about Sinatra covering his song and changing his lyric, but grew to appreciate it in time. By 1991, Harrison had begun singing Sinatra's version of the line in concert and continued to sing it that way until his death. Harrison has also been quoted as saying "My personal favourite is the version by James Brown. It was one of his B-sides. I have it on my jukebox at home. It's absolutely brilliant."
  • Billy Bragg enjoyed Kirsty MacColl's cover of his song "A New England" and wrote two entirely new verses of the song especially for her to record. After her death in 2000, he has always included those verses in his own performances of the song as a tribute.
  • Though he hasn't gone so far as to call it superior to the original, Robert Smith from The Cure loved Dinosaur Jr.'s version of "Just Like Heaven", and has said it influenced the way the band play it live. The original studio recording had a clean guitar lead, whereas in live performances Smith tends to emulate J. Mascis' distorted guitar tone, making the song sort of sound like a hybrid of the original version and the Dinosaur Jr. cover.
  • Iggy Pop liked Siouxsie and the Banshees' cover of "The Passenger", declaring that "she sings it well and she threw a little note in when she sings it, that I wish I had thought of, it's kind of improved it [...]. The horn thing is good."
  • Doja Cat enjoyed Rainych's Japanese version of "Say So" and considers it to basically be a definitive foreign-language version.
  • Gorillaz never had a full video for Rhinestone Eyes, with the official video being a storyboard film. However, one fan dedicated six years to animating the video, to gorgeous results. The official Gorillaz page even left a comment with a fist bump emoji in there.
  • Norwegian YouTuber Ole Wold has a series of videos where he MSTs russ songs. At least the following three people/groups took it in stride:
    • SOLGUDEN left a comment on the 2017 video saying "Hahaha YOU ARE A LEGEND!!" even though Ole panned both of the SOLGUDEN songs he featured in the video.
    • The group GOOFY 2018 had their theme song lampooned in the 2018 video, with Ole calling out the lyric "I wash my dick in pussy" as gross. They left a comment joking that if he joins them for a ride, he can wash his dick in pussy too.
    • After Ole called out the producer Soppgirobygget for their songs being Strictly Formula, they left a comment saying "Hahaha, we'll sharpen up🖤".
  • Russian singer and musician Alina Gingertail did a cover of "Time Only Knows", the ending song from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Among the people who praised it was Stuart Chatham, the song's original composer.
  • DragonForce guitarist Herman Li did a live playthrough "Through the Tables and Memes", a meme edit of their Signature Song "Through the Fire and Flames", and enjoyed it.
  • Billy Joel, when asked about his opinion on Fall Out Boy's cover/continuation of "We Didn't Start the Fire", praised it and was happy that someone was able to make the second part to the song that fans have been asking for.
  • Anthony Field of The Wiggles posted a clip of the "The Turtlenecks" scene from the Family Guy episode "The Boys in the Band" to his Instagram, calling them the “American Wiggles”.

    New Media 

    Radio 
  • X Minus One's "The C-Chute": Isaac Asimov loved the actor for Mullen so much that he claimed to have deliberately taken steps to avoid learning the name so that the actor would always be "Mullen" to him.

    Stand Up Comedy 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Mark Rosewater, the head designer of Magic: The Gathering, not only approves of fans who design their own cards and sets, he actually writes official articles on the site intended to teach them how to make good, fun cards that play well. He DOES note that he's not allowed to look at any fan-made cards for legal reasons, but he still very much supports custom card-making.

    Theatre 

    Theme Parks 
  • At Universal Studios:
    • Audrey Geisel, widow of Dr. Seuss, was both surprised and very pleased with how well the Seuss Landing area at Islands of Adventure turned out to be, feeling that it did great justice in translating her late husband's works into a theme park setting.
    • Similarly, J. K. Rowling was more than impressed with how Universal handled the Wizarding World of Harry Potter areas.
    • The temporary Sailor Moon 4-D show at Universal Studios Japan earned the approval of the franchise's creator, Naoko Takeuchi, who said, "I wish I could experience it every day! Seeing the beautiful Sailor Guardians leaping about and fighting evil, it's all so amazing. It makes me glad to be alive."

    Video Games 
  • The Angry Birds fansite AngryBirdsNest was created in 2010 with developer Rovio Entertainment's permission, and Rovio has acknowledged them on the official Angry Birds website, as well as an Angry Birds Seasons "Pig Days" level.
  • The creators of Chinese Parents, a game based on raising a child up until high school graduation that's set in China, gave Vile Monarch their blessing to create Growing Up while basing its mechanics on the former.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Valve Software:
    • One of Valve's founding principles was to do the opposite of id Software, whose release of source code was a combination of throwing the fans a bone and Carmack showing off his programming genius. No matter how thriving or prolific the mod community became id dismissed them as geeky hobbyists, amateurs and peons, and made no attempts to support them when communities and distribution channels were at risk of disappearing. Valve from the beginning hosted modding forums, and file databases and file sharing.
    • The company posts fan works of Portal and Portal 2 on the games' Facebook page. These have included "This is Aperture" and a video of "Still Alive" done with lasers.
    • Valve approved and publicized a Half-Life 2 fan film titled Escape from City 17.
    • Every once in a while, the official Team Fortress 2 blog showcases fan works for the game, such as Brentalfloss's Team Fortress 2 theme song.
    • There is Black Mesa, a Fan Remake of Half-Life in the Source Engine, which Valve added to Steam through Greenlight. Valve allowed it on condition they remove "Source" from the name (so people wouldn't think it was an official Valve release), and on condition that they got first dibs on playing it.
    • A fan-made virtual reality build of Half-Life 2 has also been given Valve's blessing.
    • In general, Valve is extremely supportive of fan works, even going out of their way to release and support tools to help make them, particularly Game Mods. Valve's reason for being so benevolent toward these efforts? In a plot worthy of The Last Starfighter, they use them as a means of scouting for talent.
    • They've also been very active on fan-made Left 4 Dead content as well. They published "Cold Stream", a fan-made campaign, themselves for anyone to play (even on console), published "The Last Stand" alongside 20 fan-made survival maps in 2021 (and "The Last Stand" also features the team using a fan-made piece of music for the final Tank battle), and when they learned that a team was developing a campaign in a mall called "Dead Before Dawn", they gave the team a unique voice clip of Francis saying "I hate malls".
  • Bungie is pretty benevolent toward all fan works of its material, regularly showcasing notable ones like Red vs. Blue or Halo: A Fistful of Arrows on its news. They gave Rooster Teeth permission to use the Halo assets without problems.
  • Hideo Kojima:
    • He was very impressed with Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy, and was moved by the filmmakers' passion and respect for the Metal Gear series.
    • He also liked the reaction videos to and the various parodies of the Death Stranding announcement trailer. In particular, he said his favorite that he'd seen was Beer Stranding.
    • He loved Mega64's parody of Metal Gear Solid and has cameod in their videos from time to time.
  • Reverge Labs puts up fan art of Skullgirls every Friday as part of Fan Art Friday on their developer blog.
  • Tim Schafer tweeted about a fanmade mashup of Psychonauts footage with audio of the Inception trailer and considered it well-done.
  • BIT.TRIP COMPLETE (the Compilation Rerelease for Wii) includes, as Unlockable Content, remixes of songs from the first three games by a fan named Mike Dannebaum, and songs inspired by the games by PreciseHero.
  • There was a project to remake Duke Nukem 3D using the Unreal engine. Gearbox, the current holder of the Duke Nukem IP, approved of the effort. That is, until Interceptor read the details of the personal license they were granted...
  • Capcom:
    • The company has not only acknowledged the existence of Maximillian's Assist Me series by linking the videos on their website, they even sponsored the Ultimate Assist Me series so Max and the crew wouldn't have to pay for the production costs out of their pockets like they normally do. Taken even further in the finale of Retro Assist Me: where Yoshinori Ono makes a cameo at the end. The only thing preventing it from being Ascended Fanon at this point is that it's still a fanmade work and not official.
    • They also showed their support to the "Mr. X gon give it to ya" meme from Resident Evil 2 (Remake) and even made the joke on their own Twitter feed.
    • Casey Edwards (the composer of the main theme of Devil May Cry 5, "Devil Trigger") left a comment on the Triple-Q mash-up, "Love Shack Trigger", claiming to love it.
    • Also from Devil May Cry 5, a fan rewrote the lyrics of Vergil's "Bury The Light" Image Song to focus on the meme about Vergil not paying child support, which resulted into "Bury The Guilt". Victor Borba (the singer of "Bury The Light") was amazed at the parody cover, he gave it his approval, which is also pinned at the top of the video's comments.
      Victor Borba: wow... honestly can't believe a full 9 minute parody was made for this song and done so well... you've got a great voice dude and the creativity of all of you who wrote out these lyrics is amazing LMAO great job
    • Virtual Youtuber Koseki Bijou wrote her own personalized lyrics to "Bury the Light" and wanted to do a full cover of the song, but broke it up by verse due to fear of getting copyright struck. That is, until Casey Edwards, the song's composer, showed up in her chat and gave her the go-ahead to do the full thing with the official soundtrack backing.
    • Julia Voth, the face model for Jill in Resident Evil Remake and Resident Evil 5, supports the Jill/Chris ship, joking in the comments of her Instagram post announcing her pregnancy that Chris got her pregnant.
  • Bethesda:
    • Their official blog had linked to Fallout: Nuka Break, considering a "great work". They also tweeted Prequeltwice. Every Elder Scrolls and Fallout title produced and/or published by them comes complete with a modding kit that is essentially the API they used to build the game world. And Skyrim wound up being the launch title for Steam Workshop.
    • There's Fallout: Lanius, which got approval and support from both Obsidian Entertainment and Bethesda.
    • Enderal and Nehrim are considered among the greatest mods for Skyrim and Oblivion, respectively, being Total Conversions that are considered modern CRPG classics. That said, it's worth noting that Nehrim and Enderal were allowed to have official Steam pages for easy install.
    • Bethesda also featured the massive multi mod project, Beyond Skyrim, on their blog, expressing admiration for the ambitious scope of the project.
    • Bethesda was "left speechless" over Brian Curtin's live action trailer for Fallout 76.
  • Double Dragon creator Yoshihisa Kishimoto praised Abobo's Big Adventure and doesn't mind unofficial derivative works as long as they're good and have something to do with the franchise.
  • Insomniac Games:
  • SWERY, the game director of Deadly Premonition, loves any and all fan-works of the game, and regularly links to pieces of fan art and writings on the game on his Twitter account. In a Game Developer's Conference presentation, he even explained that creating fan-friendly characters and worlds is a part of his game design philosophy because it gives fans a way to enjoy the game even when they're not playing it.
  • The Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur contained an extensive, unlockable fan art gallery. Unfortunately, these galleries aren't included in later ports of the game due to the fact that over a decade has passed since the original release, and thus it is difficult or impossible to track down the original artists so they can re-sign the usage rights for new consoles, as well as some of the art being blatantly sexual in nature (and thus affecting content guidelines from other companies).
  • ZUN is generally quite supportive of Touhou Project fan work, and usually only demands that the products are clearly marked as unofficial fan material. It's even believed to be part of the reason canon is so vague and Unreliable Narrator-driven; it leaves more space for fanon.
  • Overkill Software, makers of PAYDAY: The Heist:
    • They saw a group of fans create a skill calculator for the sequel to help other fans get a better understanding of what each skill does and how much of a bonus some skill tiers give since the in-game description can be either vague or outright wrong. Overkill gave the calculator their seal of approval. Due to some "anti-fan" moves from overkill, the site has since gone down with it showing no signs of going back up.
    • They later gave their seal of approval to HoxHud, a community-made HUD upgrade that shows additional information about the game as well as other features, such as holding down the action key. The sound that HoxHud plays to show it's running, ("HoxHud, Initialized.") was provided by Hoxton's voice actor himself.
  • Hanako Games has an official section of their forum for fan art and fan fiction, and Hanako has been known to hold fan work contests with free games as prizes.note 
  • Rockstar Games has been looking over the top-rated jobs people make in Grand Theft Auto Online, and adding the best ones to the game proper, as 'Rockstar Verified'. They also regularly post news on their Social Club site about fan-made videos and crews that pique their interest. As of recently, however, they seem to have stopped doing this.
  • The Silver Lining, a fan-created sequel of the popular King's Quest series of adventure games, received a ringing endorsement from creator Roberta Williams, who was overjoyed to see her characters in 3D.
  • Hajime Tabata, director of Final Fantasy XV, approves of Photoshopped memes of a scene with Noctis and company in a car, which was first shown in the Tokyo Game Show 2014 trailer. With that, Square Enix rolls out transparent PNG files of that scene for everyone to poke fun with, which counts as Parody Assistance.
  • While Nintendo has gained a reputation for being far more strigent with fan works than their peers, they still manage to have a few examples of this:
    • Junichi Masuda of Game Freak is on record as saying that Pokémon Uranium sounded impressive and that he hoped the devs would make more games. Sadly, while the game wasn't hit by a cease-and-desist as popularly believed, Nintendo's lawyers still issued a warning regardless.
    • Rhythm Heaven Reanimated and Karate Man Reanimated, Multi Animator Projects created by Western fans to celebrate the Rhythm Heaven series, have had both art director Ko Takeuchi and series producer/creator Tsunku♂ express thanks and fondness for their fans' dedication to the franchise.
    • An interesting variant with Cadence of Hyrule. The developers of that game originally planned on making DLC for their previous game, Crypt Of The Necrodancer, that featured The Legend of Zelda music. When they went to Nintendo for permission, Nintendo vetoed the idea... because they wanted them to make a full-fledged Zelda spin-off in the same style instead, thanks to series creator Shigeru Miyamoto and series producer Eiji Aonuma being huge fans of Necrodancer.
    • Nintendo gave their blessing to PlatinumGames to self-publish The Wonderful 101 Remastered as a multi-platform game, despite Nintendo having originally funded the game themselves as a Wii U exclusive years prior. Before this, they also allowed the use of the Japanese voice track made for the Wii U of the first Bayonetta to also be used for the PC version.
  • The developers of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Jake Solomon and Ananda Gupta, have regularly shown their support for Beaglerush, an influential player of their games. They would later give him a code to review the upcoming Enemy Within expansion. In turn, Beaglerush goes through every single piece of fan art submitted to him, especially praising talented artists and writers such as Vesmolol's fanfiction. Jake and other developers have also been very vocally impressed by the Long War Game Mod and cited it as a major reason for including modding tools and assets with XCOM 2.
  • Nobuo Uematsu's reaction to hearing the OverClocked ReMix track "The Impresario" (a cover of the opera from Final Fantasy VI In the Style of "Bohemian Rhapsody") was to say he owed the creators of the remix a beer.
  • Cindy Morgan posted an approval of the new Yori skin for Tron: Run/r on her Tumblr feed.
  • Hideki Kamiya, the creator of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, tweeted that he was looking forward to the result of DEATH BATTLE!'s "Dante vs Bayonetta" match. However, a short time later, he changed his mind and denounced it, saying he would rather Dante and Bayonetta team up instead of fight each other.
  • Yandere Simulator: YandereDev has posted fan work, such as videos and artwork, of the game on the blog. He's even said that fan work is one of the few things he wants to be emailed about since he likes seeing it and makes him feel like programming the game is worth it. He's also commented on YouTube videos of the game, and lent his voice to the outro of "Senpai Notice Me: A Yandere Simulator Musical" by Random Encounters. His YouTube channel also lists liked videos, many of which are Let's Plays and other related works for Yandere Simulator.
  • Michiel van den Bos, the original composer of Deus Ex's UNATCO Theme, said that Triple-Q's mashup of it with DMX's X Gon Give It to Ya "made my day". Meanwhile, Alexander Brandon approved of the mashup with Wan Chai Market.
  • Eipix, the developer behind the Dark Parables series, discovered a PowerPoint presentation about the games on Tumblr. They contacted the fan who made it for permission and have used it as official marketing on their social media sites. (They also thanked her for making the page about the games on This Very Wiki.)
  • James Arnold Taylor voices his approval of a Final Fantasy X mod that replaces all audio with Tidus' laugh.
  • Doug Drexler, a popular Ascended Fanboy within the Star Trek series, was tickled pink when he was approached by Cryptic Studios for approval of making one of his popularly designed ships, the NX-Refit (namely a NX-class from Star Trek: Enterprise outfitted with a secondary hull that makes it a go-between of the NX-class and the popular Constitution-class) for Star Trek Online. In fact, Cryptic Studios approached CBS for permission to use this and they suggested they talk to Drexler himself.
  • While Pyst often gets a bad rap, Myst co-creator Rand Miller has said he loves it and even has a copy of it in Cyan's vault.
  • The Naughty Dog team have had warm praise for Vicarious Visions' work on the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.
  • LSD: Dream Emulator creator Osamu Sato not only approves of but would like to work with the LSD: Revamped project, an attempt to recreate the 1998 game in modern HD.
  • Edmund McMillen spoke very favorably of The Binding of Isaac: Antibirth, a fan-made expansion for The Binding of Isaac. So much so that the creators of the expansion were hired to collaborate with McMillen for the fourth and fifth expansion packs of Afterbirth+. And now, with the Repentance expansion, Antibirth became an official part of the game. You can't get much more approval from God than that.
  • The Sakura Wars franchise's founding father and other developers who worked on the previous games praised Sakura Wars (2019) even before its release:
    • Oji Hiroi, the series creator and lyricist for the games, and Satoru Akahori, the scenario writer for the first four games, were very impressed with Sega's work on the game.
    • Naoki Morita, who designed the world settings for the first four games, commented on Twitter that he was excited about the game.
  • Joe Sparks regularly posts replies or comments whenever Total Distortion is brought up. In one of his videos, he expresses amazement in how the game over song "You Are Dead" spread all over Youtube.
  • 11 Bit Studios, who created Frostpunk, commented on this video, calling the song "just too awesome". They even sponsored the creators of the song to create these songs that details the differences between the Faith and Order paths.
  • Most video game creators ignore fan games, some voice approval of them. Scott Cawthon, creator of Five Nights at Freddy's? He's funding them. Behold The Fazbear Fanverse Initiative.
  • Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, posted a tweet about the Mettaton reference seen in Episode 7 of the Pop Team Epic anime, thanking bkub for it in a reply.
  • Friday Night Funkin' Game Mods:
  • Epic Games:
    • They did this four times for the Unreal series. All the released patches here have Epic's actual blessing, giving them somewhat of semi-official release statusnote :
      • The first instance was allowing the Unreal Tournament Preservation Group (UTPG) to release Epic-sanctioned patches, resulting in version 440-451b being released for the game.
      • The second instance took place in 2005, where OldUnreal's admin Smirftsch got Epic's permission to develop patches for Unreal, resulting in ver. 227a-j.
      • Overlapping with Official Fan-Submitted Content, the third instance took place in 2014, where the entire Unreal community got to participate in what would have been Unreal Tournament 4. Sadly, due to the unforeseen success of Fortnite requiring Epic's efforts to be focused on that game, few things came to pass.
      • The last instance took place in 2019, with the UTPG long gone, and was, once again, OldUnreal to the rescue: this time admin AnthraX managed to get Epic's blessing to release community patches for Unreal Tournament, resulting in the ver. 469 patches.
    • Outside of the blessings, former lead designer Cliff Bleszinski loved the 3dsMax recreation of NyLeve's Falls and during a long time maintained a website in PlanetUnreal called "CliffyB's Ownage", dedicated to collect what were, in his opinion, "the cream of the crop from the Unreal Community", the best maps and mods from all games between Unreal and Unreal Tournament 2004. The Ownage maps for the latter game even made it into 2004 itself, which had an "Ownage" tab where the selected picks could be downloaded and added to the game itself.
  • Attacking the Tower is a fanmade installment in the Henry Stickmin Series, taking place between Stealing the Diamond and Infiltrating the Airship. The creator of the series has acknowledged its existence and has praised the creators for how good it looks.
  • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman once showed up unannounced in Tribute Games' post-development panel for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, during the Montreal Comiccon 2022 Fan Convention. The game's writer Yannick Belzil also confirmed that he liked how the 1987 version of April O'Neil became a playable character.
  • In Hi-Fi RUSH, one of the staff members, John Johanes, revealed that he reached out to Square Enix to get their permission to do the Xenogears homage, partially out of worry that it could be copyright infringement.
  • Hakita, the developer of ULTRAKILL, has given praise to fan-comic Dream's End Come True, citing it as beautifully referential and as much closure for the character of V2 as players will get.
  • A funny preemptive version with No More Heroes III: While the game was in development, director Suda51 approached Nintendo's legal team and Masahiro Sakurai in specific for his proposal to suddenly have the final boss battle turn into a Super Smash Bros. parody. They not only gave their blessing, they encouraged his idea, inspiring him to be even more blatant with the joke.
  • Square Enix actually sanctioned Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged. They cut a deal with Team Four Star to allow them to remix music from the original Final Fantasy VII and even sell albums of it in exchange for a cut of the profits. Because of this, the show lacks a disclaimer like the ones they normally put in abridged series.
  • id Software co-founder and Doom designer John Romero has played through My House and has called it a great experience.
  • Sean Chiplock is extremely supportive of fanart of Revali as long as they keep to his character as boastful and proud. This includes fetish-leaning Furry artwork - such as the time he happily responded "Large and In Charge" to fatfur art of an extremely overweight Revali on twitter. In general, the love Furries show to Revali as a character and Sean as his VA was a big contribution to him openly becoming a furry himself.
  • reubs's fan-made remake of The Simpsons Hit & Run was widely praised by the original developers of the game, with one of them claiming that if a remake of the game were ever made Disney/Fox should just use that one as it's way better than what they'd ever make.
  • City of Heroes has had several private servers running since NCsoft officially shut the game down in 2012 and the source code leaked in 2016, generally kept an open secret of not acknowledging it in fear of NCsoft issuing a cease and desist even though they're no longer doing anything with the property. In early January of 2024,NCsoft finally made a statement about them and to the shock of everyone gave the private server Homecoming not only their blessing to continue, but a license to run the game in a semi-official capacity.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 

    Web Video 
  • Economy Watch fan art has been made, with David Johnson sometimes making the fan art his profile picture on Twitter.
  • Matthew Santoro likes most fan-art done of him.
  • MrRepzion frequently posts fan-art done of him online.
  • The members of the Yogscast often reblog fan-art done of them on their respective Tumblr and Twitter pages, although they do have some limits and some of them don't take as kindly to some forms of fanfiction, mainly shipping.
  • Sips is a huge fan of the "Sips Sings" series, having provided some vocals to various tracks over the years and tweeting most new releases. Similarly, Trott of Hat Films was very complimentary of the episode guest-starring him and the other two members.
  • PewDiePie tweeted his approval of the parody that Hat Films did of his "pack opening" video.
  • Let's Players such as PewDiePie and Chaotic Monki regularly put up handpicked fan art as either the thumbnail or at the beginning of their videos.
  • Elements of Justice is a Fan Sequel to Turnabout Storm (some of the voice actors from the original would reprise their roles, although this changed due to Troubled Production). NeoArtimus, the author of Turnabout Storm, gave her blessing to the author and wished him good luck with the project.
  • Troper Jabberwocky 1996 asked Lewis Lovhaug of Atop the Fourth Wall if he could write a fic series where Linkara is a girl that is based on storylines of the show. Lewis gave him his blessing to write it.
  • The folks behind DEATH BATTLE! actively encourage people to make Let's Watches of their videos. They are especially fond of Ris Grestar's work.
  • A spin-off of Jreg's Centricide series known as Grej features four of the most extreme ideologies: INGSOC (Auth-Centre), Social Darwinist (Centre-Right), Egoist (Lib-Centre), and Communalist (Centre-Left) attempting to destroy the political compass. Jreg jremself congratulated the release of the first episode and declared it a canon side-story.
  • Rooster Teeth absolutely love their fans' work. Monty Oum was quite generous when it came to approval of fan works of RWBY, and frequently shared cosplay photos, fanart, and AMVs that caught his eye on his Facebook page. He was also very supportive of a Japanese fandub of the series. He even gave tips on making RWBY OCs for fanfics. Three examples take the cake:
    • RWBY: Grimm Eclipse was originally a fangame before Rooster Teeth snatched it up and made it official.
    • After Lindsey Jones (Ruby Rose) gave birth to her first daughter Iris, someone sent them a piece of fanart showing both her characters and her husband Michael's characters (from both RWBY and Camp Camp) cooing over the baby. She posted a picture of it on Twitter and assured the artist that they would show Iris the art when she was old enough to understand it.
    • "Answer to Me" was a fanmade Leitmotif for Taiyang Xiao Long, Yang and Ruby's father. Taking cues from "I Burn", it's a long Badass Boast in music form interlaced with Papa Wolf. The real awesome, though, is that in the comments below, you'll see that Jeff Williams (the face of the RWBY composers) himself personally popped onto the Soundcloud page to praise it. This particular bit of awesome, combined with the song's popularity, has led to many fans clamoring for the makers to use it as Taiyang's official theme, which is not without precedent at Rooster Teeth.
  • When Ron Perlman was announced to voice Optimus Primal in The Transformers: Power of the Primes instead of Gary Chalk reprising the role, many fans thought it was Questionable Casting—though Chalk himself isn't among the detractors as he expressed interest in seeing Perlman in the role.
  • When The Rpg Monger posted his Fandom Files video detailing the problems within the Eddsworld fandom, he received a comment from TomSka thanking him for his ability to see the fandom for both its positive and negative aspects, and also adding extra information on how he's managed to stay sane by creating his own fandom through projects such as asdfmovie, which are largely disconnected from the larger Eddsworld fandom.
  • NileRed, a YouTube chemist known for making interesting and occasionally bizarre chemical syntheses, as well as his monotonous and calming voiceovers, had a parody channel, NileGreen, pop up in 2021, featuring a HowToBasic-level of Surreal Humor and an AI "Deepfake" of NileRed's voice. NileRed commented his praise on the effort NileGreen put into his videos, and the creator of NileGreen would later appear on the "Safety First" podcast where NileRed was one of the hosts.
  • Both Amelia Watson and Gawr Gura of hololive's English branch have played and lent their approval to Smol Ame, a hololive fangame featuring a Fun Size version of Watson.note 
  • Cover and Hololive in general took notice of HoloCure, requested permission to stream which then resulted in various Hololive members from each branch (e.g. Matsuri from HoloJP, Kronii from HoloEN and Risu from HoloID) giving the fan-made game a go and some of them like Mumei got addicted as a result.
  • Steve White (former writer of Barney & Friends) found the 2019 animated short "Barney Takes a Dump" (which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin) very amusing. He actually found the video to be one of the funniest things he's ever seen.
  • Despite all the nasty things the Game Grumps say about the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, Team Sonic are fans of their series, watch their show, have tweeted to them before, and even sometimes reach out to them in private to talk about aspects of their games developments. One of the QA team of Sonic Boom even contacted the Grumps, after Dan's "QUALITY ASSURANCE?!" gaffe when reading the end credits, to explain that even they agreed with the Grumps's assessments of the game: They found and reported most of the issues the Grumps complained about, but nothing was done to fix any of them since the game was being so desperately rushed by the higher-ups it was all the dev team could do to duct-tape together something that didn't explode before release date.
  • The 2012 claymation short Pingu's The Thing (aka Thingu) by Lee Hardcastle is a parody of John Carpenter's The Thing but takes place in Pingu's universe. Carpenter himself actually loved the short and tweeted "That the short is even better than the original movie". When the short was temporarly banned from Youtube, a 2018 reupload of the short included Carpenter's 2012 tweet at the end of the video.

    Western Animation 
  • In general, the showrunners and writers of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic tend to enjoy a lot of the fanworks created by the Periphery Demographic:
  • Several writers on Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers lurk on the fan list, and Chris Rowley admits to having read some of the fanfic.
  • Both Britta Philips and Samantha Newark, who shared the singing and speaking roles of the titular character of Jem is a fan of the extremely vulgar parody series/Gag Dub Jiz. Newark thinks that it's hilarious to make something as sweet as Jem so profane.
  • Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick, and a few other crew members associated with Superjail! have been known to appreciate the fanart and cosplay in existence for the series, while Karacas finds the adult fanart hilarious. It culminated in Karacas doodling a quick "Thank you!" illustration for a Japanese/Korean joint-produced doujinshi.
  • Greg Weisman has an account on the Young Justice (2010) Wiki. Also, it's sort of a meme in Tumblr fandom for the tie-in comic's artist, Chris Jones, to like or reblog someone's fanart or image edit, followed by the fan screencapping the notif and posting "He saw me!" Weisman also reused the explanation for Jeffrey Robbins knowing Hudson was a gargoyle introduced in The Goliath Chronicles in his official comic book follow-up. He's also "tickled" that the Xanatos Gambit trope was named after his show.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    Doug: So Grey Delisle is aware of my Avatar Vlogs and commented with a happy face on one of them. Um...should I be concerned about this? That is, the last time Azula said she looked forward to a show, there was a circle of fire and an assortment of killer animals. Eh, it'd be a cool way to go. " :) " back at ya.
    • Dante Basco, the voice of Zuko, also watched the vlogs. Appropriately, this became known soon after Doug released a vlog with immense praise for his acting. It even got to the point where Basco himself appeared as a guest star on a Nostalgia Critic episode.
    • Bryan Konietzko and Mike DiMartino (shortened to "Bryke") often reblog fanmade sets of gifs from Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Similarly, Mike was screenshotted liking some fanart of Korra and Asami after the final episode of Korra was released. Note that this was a day or two before Bryke would make the announcement of it being canon. They've also admitted that various pun-related memes have become something of a Guilty Pleasure for them.
    • Janet Varney, the voice actress of Korra, noted at a convention that some fans had been reluctant to give their fanart of Korra and Asami kissing or about to kiss. She actively encouraged fans not to worry and said she would happily sign any such fanart.
  • ChalkZone co-creator Bill Burnett posted this fan video titled Rudy Gets a Call by Max Gilardi (aka HotDiggedyDemon), where Rudy is an adult (and presumably forgot about ChalkZone) and Snap calls to catch up with him, on his Tumblr account and said it was awesome.
  • South Park:
    • One episode has Cartman becoming a hall monitor and turning it into a copy of Dog the Bounty Hunter, with his own crew and big-breasted wife, Beth. Dog loved the episode, and the real Beth said they should've made her boobs bigger.
    • Chris Hansen immensely enjoyed his depiction on South Park, saying that it made him cool in the eyes of his sons.
    • Billy Mays' son enjoyed the pastiche of his late father in "Dead Celebrities", where he pitches products to Kyle's younger brother Ike from beyond the grave, and at one point even pitches a threat to physically attack another dead celebrity, which Mays' son says he felt his father would laugh the most at.
    • Nintendo, of all companies, seemed to enjoy the free promotion for the Wii in the "Go God Go" episodes. Not long after the episode aired, a poll on their website was made asking fans how badly they wanted the new console. One of the choices being "Worse than Cartman", which was at 80% when the poll closed. Nintendo later used a clip of him asking his mother for one in a montage for their E3 2007 presentation. They even gave Trey Parker and Matt Stone their own Wii consoles.
    • According to this article, Kanye West enjoyed the "Fish Sticks" episode, though admitted that their parody of him did hurt his feelings a bit.
    • James Cameron enjoyed their take on him in "Raising the Bar," though he denies making his crew members sing sea shanties about him. Interesting to note is that Cameron is portrayed in a fairly positive if not eccentric light as an adventurous man who, as the title of the episodes suggests, raises the bar with everything he does.
    • Cesar Millan the Dog Whisperer has nothing but praise and laughter for his portrayal in Tsst. He is so pleased with how well the writers have Shown Their Work that he actually uses moments from the episode as teaching aids to eagerly explain the science and mentality behind the way his character is treating Cartman, without ever once being able to find Falsely Advertised Accuracy. He even sincerely thanks Matt Stone and Trey Parker for the work they did, for promoting him and his show, and even offers his services if they ever find themselves with an out-of-control dog.
      They did such a great job on everything. Everything is perfection!
  • Rick and Morty: As soon as co-creator and voice actor Justin Roiland found out that someone was working on a Mr. Meeseeks mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, he not only posted his wholehearted approval but even offered to record extra lines for it.
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes series creator Ian Jones-Quartey frequently expresses fondness for fan art and other fan creations on social media.
  • Patrick McHale, creator of Over the Garden Wall, notably geeked out about Garden Falls, a fancomic crossing his show over with Gravity Falls, linking to it on Twitter and tagging Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch. Wirt's voice actor Elijah Wood also expressed approval via exclamation points.
  • Another Nostalgia Critic-related example: his video "Is Goofy Secretly Badass?" was shared on Twitter by Bill Farmer (Goofy's voice actor) and Jason Marsden (Max's voice actor).
  • Alex Hirsch:
  • The Justice League episode "For the Man Who Has Everything", which was adapted from a story of the same name written by Alan Moore. Moore is infamous for his disdain of the mainstream comic book industry and how it shamelessly milks its properties for all their worth; this goes double for any adaptations of his work. This one episode is the sole adaptation of his work that Moore has not only never lambasted, but outright praised. It is also one of only two adaptations where he allowed his name to be credited (the other being the film that made him hate adaptations to begin with).
  • Both Danny Phantom series creator Butch Hartman and voice of Danny David Kaufman expressed their approval of Danny's inclusion in DEATH BATTLE!, with Hartman even doing a reaction video to the fight.
  • Charles M. Schulz's reaction to the 1986 animated parody of the Charlie Brown/Peanuts series Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown is complicated. According to a Youtube comment by Mr Undiyne from a Youtube upload of the short. He knew somebody in the animation trade that managed to get Schulz to watch the short. Schulz watched the short in complete silence and told the crew that while he found it amusing, he wish to never see the Peanuts characters depicted like that again.
    Mr Undiyne: "According to someone I know in the animation trade, Charles Schulz was shown this on video at an animation convention. Jim Reardon and friends supposedly managed to talk Schulz into watching the film to get his opinion. He reportedly sat silent and motionless as he watched it. After it was finished he stood up, cleared his throat, and said, "Very clever, very funny, but just don't do it again, okay?" That was it."
  • Final Space creator Olan Rogers praised a fan-video that was posted to Reddit.
  • Thomas & Friends:
    • Former co-composer Mike O'Donnell has gone on to praise UpsideNow's Thomas Reorchestrated: Sodor Symphony project (which orchestrates much of the Season 1 music) in a YouTube comment below one of the tracks. Mattel also appears to approve of the rearrangements too, as the official Thomas and Friends YouTube account has placed two of the tracks in a playlist dedicated to fan content.
    • Mike O'Donnell has also praised insaneintherainmusic's remix of the main theme. Series creator Britt Allcroft has also shared and praised the remix on her Facebook page.
  • Zig-Zagged with Tex Avery and Chuck Jones' reactions to the 1975 fan animated short of the Looney Tunes called "Rabbit Habit" by Steve Peck. The short involved what Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd would be doing in Central Park, New York City 12 years after Warner Bros. stopped making Looney Tunes. The short depicts Elmer as a drug dealer, Daffy as a crack addict, and Bugs Bunny getting high. While Tex Avery (67 at the time) loved the short by saying "I wish I had a job to give you." with the short itself getting laughs at film festivals. Chuck Jones (who was very conservative) did not like what Steve Peck did to his characters and never offered him a job at Warner Bros.
  • Star Wars Rebels:
    • Dave Filoni showed "Spark of Rebellion" to the maker himself, George Lucas. He liked it.
    • Timothy Zahn, writer of The Thrawn Trilogy, approved of how Rebels was going to put Grand Admiral Thrawn on screen. After the series aired, he praised the writers for their keen understanding of Thrawn's character and how the heroes had to overcome him.
    • In part thanks to fan demand, Katee Sackhoff and Kevin McKidd have expressed interest in reprising their roles as Bo-Katan and Fenn Rau respectively in live-action Star Wars. Sackhoff specifically found it touching that people wanted her to appear in The Mandalorian, which she eventually ended up doing in that show's second season.
    • Fans have pointed out that Rex's aged facial features, skin tone and beard looked identical to a rebel ground soldier from Episode VI, raising questions over if they were the same person and loving the idea because it would give Rex closure to be present at the Empire's fall. While the creators have never confirmed this theory, they loved the idea and nodded to it in the series finale by having Rex be dressed in a very similar outfit to that soldier.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai has spoken positively regarding Yuki Matsuzaki's performance as Miyamoto Usagi during the fifth season, which may have played a part in him reprising the role in both Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge.
  • Dan Povenmire has praised Kevin Temmer's 3D interpretation of Dr. Doofenshmirtz, calling it "spectacular" and "basically what we would make Doofenshmirtz look like if we were making a CG version of him". He also says that Kevin's Doofenshmirtz voice is spot-on.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Nancy Cartwright mentioned in an NPR interview that "the youngest daughter in Mrs. Doubtfire" was the inspiration for the voice she used of the little girl that Moe yells at in his restaurant in "Bart Sells His Soul". When Mara Wilson (a big Simpsons fan) found this out later, she was extremely flattered, quipping in a podcast that it was like "finding out your name is in the Torah".
    • According to Edward Norton, Marlon Brando loved the episode "A Streetcar Named Marge", which parodied A Streetcar Named Desire by adapting it into an in-universe musical:
      Norton: I showed him the episode where Marge gets cast in a musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire. He loved it. Marlon loves stuff like that.

 
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Kirk reacts to Kirk

During an interview at San Diego Comic Con 2022, William Shatner, who originated the role of Captain James T. Kirk, is shown Paul Wesley's take on the role in the first season finale of Strange New Worlds, and gives it his stamp of approval.

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