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Deconstructive Parody

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Cool guys don't look at explosions, no matter how many bones get broken.

"If you are in the market for easy laughs, you learn that two well-tried ways are either to trip up a cliche or take things absolutely literally."
— Terry Pratchett, "Why Gandalf Never Married"

Most parodies work in a lighthearted manner, taking the basic plot of the thing they parody and making it humorous. The giant space station may have wiped out half the Earth in the original, but in the parody only some unimportant Acceptable Targets got destroyed, and everyone laughed.

Then, there are these. Where the parody might have made the plot silly and lighthearted, the Deconstructive Parody plays exactly like any other Deconstruction, in that everything is treated as if it were to really happen — it's just that humour is still drawn from the original story, while also serving to show what would really happen.

In a Deconstructive Parody, the giant space station will still wipe out half the Earth, and although the characters will reflect on this tragedy and take it seriously, it will still be presented humorously. Maybe all that's left are the Acceptable Targets, or perhaps the doomsday device is entirely ridiculous and non-threatening in conception, yet still works. Either way, what matters is that the plot is still treated as real, and plays out tropes as you would expect from a typical Deconstruction.

Just to note, a bunch of Lampshade Hangings don't really count, so this may not necessarily include an Abridged Series, or some Webcomics.

Compare and Contrast with: Black Comedy and Satire, Affectionate Parody, Dark Parody, Decon-Recon Switch, and Homage Derailment.

Example subpages:

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • In The '90s, the citrus soft drink Sprite ran an ad campaign called Obey Your Thirst that gleefully deconstructed and parodied contemporary advertising tropes.
    • "Sun Fizz" does this with the usage of advertising characters appearing in the real world alongside real people. The mom and kids who see it react with horror at the Thing That Should Not Be that just jumped off their bottle of orange juice to espouse its health benefits and wonderful taste.
      Hey, what's with you people? I've got vitamins and minerals!
    • A number of ads featuring Detroit Pistons star Grant Hill depict him as only giving his Celebrity Endorsement to Sprite to make money and advance his career. One has an admiring young fan down a bottle of Sprite to be just like his hero Grant Hill, and then immediately whizzes a dunk (the tagline: "You wanna make it in the NBA? Practice".).
    • The "Death Slug" ad shows a group of Hollywood producers with Skewed Priorities putting together the marketing campaign for their terrible-looking kaiju movie (a parody of Godzilla (1998), already notorious at the time as a Box Office Bomb) before they even have a script.
    • A fake ad for a soft drink called Jooky depicts it as a "party in a can" and shows attractive people in swimsuits at a beach party drinking it and having fun. We then cut to see that the ad is being watched by two bored-looking guys while a blizzard rages outside. One of them tries to open his can of Jooky, but accidentally breaks off the tab.
      • That ad got a sequel, with "Jooky Junk" lampooning the recent trend of soft drinks offering merchandise through loyalty programs. Among the Jooky Junk offered is a caulking gun, a halibut, a sea captain, a hornet's nest, a hernia belt and a chainsaw.
        I drank 93,000 cans and I got this Jooky sock!
  • The "Go Compare" ads in the UK involved an opera singer who would appear whenever people discussed car insurance and start trilling a Crowd Song jingle, in a series of ads that quickly began to elicit howls of rage from viewers all over the UK. They then ran a "Saving the Nation" series where the same opera singer would appear to people discussing car insurance, but they would respond with the same level of terror as a real person would in that situation, to be saved by someone else attacking the singer with weapons. The follow-up to that campaign imagines the same opera singer, who is now not allowed to sing, working an advertising creative, speaking in a soft Welsh accent rather than singing, and pitching terrible advertising ideas to cash in on his previous image in shallow ways.
  • An advert for The Jump, a show where celebrities compete in winter sports and the 2 people in last place are made to perform a Ski Jump, deconstructs the idea of a 'Hopeless Contestant Montage' which you'd often see in shows like Hell's Kitchen where the contestants are falling out of the sky... and a family on vacation, completely unaware of what's happening, are scared shitless as bodies fall from the sky!

    Anime and Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Deconstructive parodies of comic book superheroes are practically a dime a dozen. These days, if you count all media, it's rarer to see them played straight.
  • I Hate Fairyland is this to fairy tales, fantasy, and children's media. The series creator, Skottie Young, states that Gert is like a reflection of an adult dealing with the eventual annoyance they feel at the repetition and overly saccharine nature of those things.
    • At the same time, in a lot of ways there's a good bit of Truth in Television involved, since many fairy tales originally had some darker and grimmer elements to them before they were watered down as children's stories for the modern age.
  • A lot of the comedy of The Unbelievable Gwenpool come from the fact that it's a deconstructive parody of the Self-Insert Fic as our titular heroine is just a normal teenaged girl that just sounds like she's the strange fusion of Deadpool and Gwen Stacy (her real name is Gwen Poole). Examples include:
    • While Deadpool's Breaking the Fourth Wall moments are quick, fleeting and leaves everyone around him confused, Gwenpool goes into complete rants, leading to people asking if she's insane.
    • Being a girl from the real world, she's essentially a Secret Secret-Keeper to the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe. This proves to be a bad thing when she yells out the female Thor's identity and her response is to threaten to smash her head into the wall for saying so, forcing her to Verbal Backspace.
    • Being a heroine doesn't mean you get a blessed, carefree life - if anything, you'll get crapped on even more, especially if it can lead to more interesting storylines. And if you have sidekicks or loved ones without your brand of hero immunity? It won't be pretty.
    • Her brother also shows what "trapped in another world" might turn out like if you're not a hero protagonist - you're essentially an illegal immigrant with no records and no legal protection, so you're likely to end up either homeless or drafted into a criminal organisation. Either way, you're pretty much screwed.

    Comic Strips 
  • Calvin and Hobbes managed this with the superhero genre in four panels back in 1988 with this strip.
    Calvin: Look what mom made me! A superhero outfit! Don't I look cool? Now I can fight crime without anyone knowing my true identity! Yep, I'm all set now! ... so! Seen any crimes?
    Hobbes: Why do you care that nobody knows your identity?

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The 21 Jump Street movie deconstructs and pokes fun at all the tropes from the series of the same name. It takes the shows basic premise and sets it in modern times, showing just how different high school has become since the days the show had originally aired.
  • The Adventures of Philibert, Captain Virgin parodies Hollywood-made and France-made Swashbuckler films from the '30s to the '60s that starred the likes of Errol Flynn, Jean Marais and Gérard Barray. Most of the heroism-related tropes, idealism and drama common to the genre are exaggerated in order to be made fun of.
  • Renfield (2023) is a comedic take on the classic Bram Stoker Dracula novel. It also deconstructs the very relationship between Dracula and his servant Renfield. The film shows that a relationship like theirs can develop into something emotionally manipulative, abusive, and co-dependent overtime. The films story from that point on is about Renfield himself breaking free from Dracula's force, adjusting to modern time, and develop a sincere relationship with someone.
  • The films Her Alibi and American Dreamer parodies pulp fiction heroes. The former does it by contrasting the writing with the actual situations which inspire it, and the latter by having a housewife get Easy Amnesia and think she is her favorite literary heroine.
  • Mystery Men and The Specials do this with the superhero genre, approaching it from the perspective of a "loser" superhero team.
  • The trailers for Enchanted made it look as though it would do this for fairy tales, but it instead was a Reconstruction
  • Austin Powers does this to 1960s spy-oriented pulp fiction, namely James Bond.
  • Hot Fuzz for police/action films, but pulls a Decon-Recon Switch later on.
  • Monty Python and the Holy Grail applies this to Arthurian Legend (Terry Jones was an Arthurian scholar). The Black Knight spoofs a Stiff Upper Lip (will refuse to even flinch) and being a Determinator (acts like he's unstoppable) despite losing his limbs, one by one, in battle against Arthur.
  • The film Gunless is both a parody of Westerns in general and a deconstruction of the entire gun-slinging outlaw hero character archetype.
  • Scream (1996) did this to slasher movies. The main characters, both the protagonists and the killer Ghostface, are all Genre Savvy in how they mock, exploit, and otherwise discuss the "rules" of slashers throughout the film, with several characters making fun of horror movie victims who prove themselves Too Dumb to Live. The killings become a media circus, as would happen if somebody is murdering young, pretty, white teenagers, and the reporters wind up getting drawn into the carnage themselves. Ghostface is an ordinary human under the mask rather than an Implacable Man like Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, with all the vulnerabilities of such that allow the main characters to fight back — but he also has the speed of an ordinary person, meaning that he runs after his victims rather than slowly walking towards them. While the Ghostface outfit, with its White Mask of Doom paired with a Black Cloak, has since become iconic, at the time of the first film's release it was just an ordinary Halloween costume sold at every store, one that made the killer truly anonymous — i.e. the reason why a Serial Killer trying to conceal his or her identity might wear one. While Ghostface does have a weapon of choice (a hunting knife) and a general preference for melee weapons like any proper slasher villain, he's also a Combat Pragmatist who isn't above using guns when necessary. The Final Girl Sidney goes out of her way to make sure that the killer won't get back up for one last scare, by standing over his body and putting one between the eyes the moment he opens them. This last part is notable because, unlike other slasher sequels where the killer returns unharmed from a fatal blow, the original Ghostface stays dead and becomes a Legacy Character, with copycats and vengeful relatives taking up the mask in the sequels.
  • The 'Burbs deconstructs the Nosy Neighbor, and subverts it in the end.
  • National Security did this for cop action flicks. Martin Lawrence's character seems to think he's on Bad Boys (1995).
  • The Other Guys for Buddy Cop movies, with some Cowboy Cop thrown in. The pair of Cowboy Cops leap off a roof in pursuit of criminals, and die pretty early. Meanwhile, the protagonists are partners, but hate each other, one wants to be a Cowboy Cop but is terrible at it, and the crime they are pursuing is financial, rather than a high-stakes robbery or murder.
  • Mean Girls sets up a standard teen movie formula: the poor heroine has her social life ruined by the Alpha Bitch and her Girl Posse, and loses the guy of her dreams, so she sets out to make things right and get her revenge. When she accomplishes this, you get to watch the lead popular girl's life fall apart as her illusion that everybody liked her is shattered... and then the heroine takes her place in the social ladder, ignoring her original friends and becoming just as mean herself. The former Alpha Bitch, meanwhile, goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge that nearly wrecks the whole school. The clearest turning point is when it's overtly pointed out by one of the heroine's friends that the guy has left the bully, but still doesn't want her (or, for that matter, want anything to do with the whole mess), and yet she's still trying to ruin the once-popular girl's life. When the Title Drop finally rolls around, it refers to the protagonist.
  • Heathers, in the absolute darkest sense of the word "parody," putting some brutal twists on perceptions of teenage society and violence.
  • Santa Claus movies aimed at adults as well as children usually attempt to deconstruct the Santa mythos/iconography; for example Fred Claus implies Santa has a bad sex life due to his weight. Movies intended for adults only go even further: Bad Santa is about a Mall Santa who's a cursing, womanizing con-man.
  • Mystery Team is this for stories such as Encyclopedia Brown and The Hardy Boys. The movie is sort of a less reverent Dog Sees God in that it shows what would happen when such characters are placed in the real world.
  • Tucker & Dale vs. Evil does this for Hillbilly Horrors by making the hillbillies the heroic protagonists. The college kids only think that the Good Ol' Boy main characters are evil, and end up killing themselves in Bloody Hilarious ways through their own stupidity, before one of them (the guy who would otherwise be the male hero in a typical slasher film) goes Ax-Crazy out of prejudice against the hillbillies.
  • The Cabin in the Woods is a deconstruction of not only horror films, but horror filmmaking and fandom, with the evil gods who demand bloody entertainment that conforms to established cliches taking the place of the audience.
  • Tropic Thunder is a parody (whether it's affectionate or a poisonous Valentine is up for debate) of the filmmaking process itself and the cliche sort of people involved (the hothead producer, the eager but inexperienced director, the takes-himself-seriously consultant, the pyro guy, the prima donna actor, the agent, the rapper trying his hand at acting, the Lowest Common Denominator comedy actor trying to do serious drama...), in most cases by casting people that partially fill those roles in real life as the respective characters in the film. It loosely parodies Apocalypse Now and its famously Troubled Production as well.
  • Ted is pretty much Toy Story (the first one) mixed with Pinocchio and deconstructed with all the humour one would find in a Seth MacFarlane production (namely Family Guy). What happens if a young boy makes a wish to have his favourite toy come to life? The wish comes true, of course, but Ted shows what happens when the boy and his cuddly toy companion grow into adulthood. Mostly concerning widespread media coverage, the complicated relationship issues which arise from a woman wanting more from a man who still sleeps with his teddy bear despite him being in his thirties, and the fact that Ted has spent his whole life living off others and has consequently never had a job or even learned to live on his own, so when he actually does need to find work, all he he can manage is a piss-poor cashier job at a crappy downtown grocery store.
  • The short film The Sleepover is this to slasher movies, particularly slasher franchises, by showing what life is like in between movies when the town has gotten used to having masked slashers constantly coming back. Kids are told to double-check under their beds and in their closets for killers, one needs firearms and martial arts training to get a babysitting license, there exists a three-step rule for escaping slashers, and everybody is armed with at least a knife.
  • Starship Troopers started out as a satirical story called Bug Hunt before it was tied to the novel. Paul Verhoeven hated the novel and felt it had a lot of fascistic elements (a very hotly debated assessment), so he made the film an outright parody of the novel, the Why We Fight WWII propaganda films, and jingoistic warmongering and fascism in general through deconstructing the entire premise. The inhuman enemy that is "Othered" are literally inhuman monsters, even moreso than in the novel. The militaristic society makes the humans so complacent in their superiority that they refuse to even consider the enemy to be intelligent after the Bugs attack them with a Colony Drop from across the galaxy. They try to use horrendous military tactics and their forces are completely slaughtered. The humans only seem like heroes because of the propaganda-like tone of the film itself. The viewer is encouraged to join the Mobile Infantry because every soldier is needed. Yet despite all that, it's done in such an over-the-top fashion that most viewers don't even realize the parodic intent and cheer the humans on as if it were a straight-up action movie.
  • Pain & Gain: Of The American Dream. Daniel Lugo and his fellow conspirators are not Self-Made Men who worked hard to achieve the high life, but a bunch of roided-up Stupid Crooks who attempt to kidnap, steal, murder, and bullshit their way to the top, and fall from it just as quickly because of their own short-sightnedness and mistakes. Even their victim, who is really the closest to embodying the American Dream, as he worked two jobs in college and now owns a modestly succesful pizza business, is a massive Jerkass. The film even has most of the visual excess (shot like some of the cheesier music videos of the day) during scenes where Daniel discusses what he thinks the dream is.
  • Deep in the Valley is a Porn with Plot sex comedy where a Nice Guy and his sleazy Bromantic Foil get trapped in the world of adult films. It plays with a lot of stereotypical porn roles, and even features a love interest who's tired of constant casual sex and who wants a meaningful relationship.
  • Neighbors:
    • Of the frat boy comedies that Seth Rogen starred in. Namely, it shows how reasonable people would act surrounded by characters from these movies, and how the frat guys who engage in it are pathetic, petty Man-Children who are unwilling to accept maturity.
    • It also deconstructs The Stoner, with the characters' (both the Radners' and the frat boys') habitual use of both weed and weed jokes with their friends depicted as a major sign of their inability to grow up and let go of their Glory Days.
  • The Voices is one to the comedy subgenre "guy talks with his pets". Jerry, the hero, is obviously insane, his talks with his pets seem to be hallucinated, his cat is a sociopath, his home is actually an horrible filthy den that he usually sees beautiful and clean thanks to his hallucinations, and he eventually becomes a serial killer thanks to a chain of disasters including the accidental murder of his crush after giving a mercy kill to a deer that requested it (It Makes Sense in Context). The movie is also very funny, thanks to the dialogs with the pets.
  • Tower Heist is one for heist movies. Only one member of the crew is a criminal, and he's a petty one at that. The big heist gets messed up before it even starts.
  • Jack Burton of Big Trouble in Little China is a Deconstructive Parody of the All-American Face. Burton sports a James Dean pompadour and drawls like John Wayne, but lives up to these iconic images of American masculinity with less than perfect aplomb. Overconfident and always slightly behind the information curve, his bombast sometimes pays off, but more often makes him the butt of a slapstick gag. For a light comic performance, Kurt Russell walks a very precise tightrope, giving Jack a puppyish quality that redeems his made-in-America arrogance. The audience roots for him to succeed, and to be taken down a peg or two along the way.
  • Blazing Saddles took everything from the American Western genre, a couple dozen more from every other genre of American film, and proceeded to nuke them (particularly the racist elements) in a way that only Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor could manage. It was almost two decades before anyone took the Western seriously again.
  • Ghostbusters (1984) does this to supernatural horror, particularly the ghost/demon hunters who often come in to save the day. The titular protagonists aren't out specifically to prove the existence of the supernatural or protect people from the forces of evil, the way that the exorcists and paranormal investigators in many horror films are. Sure, that is part of their job description, but what they really care about is getting paid for it, with a dash of For Science! added. They're framed as working class heroes and small business owners (they get fired from Columbia University at the start of the film), their uniforms based on those of exterminators and their equipment and home base meant to recall firefighters. And speaking of their equipment, they have little use for ancient traditions when it comes to fighting these monsters, instead relying on their own state-of-the-art technology to do the job.
  • Ready or Not (2019) does this to the Hunting the Most Dangerous Game plot. A wealthy family is hunting an unarmed woman through their mansion as part of a twisted game... except they're Upper-Class Twits who barely know what they're doing, and even the more competent ones are too apathetic or out-of-practice to be as threatening as they could be.
  • The Ballad of Buster Scruggs uses the title character to do this to the classic Roy Rogers-style singing cowboy archetype, generally seen as one of the more "innocent" Western Characters when compared to the grimmer and darker Anti-Hero gunslingers who followed him. Turns out, however, that when you drop a brightly dressed and irrepressibly cheerful fellow with a song into his heart into a realistic-style western, and have him casually blow people away with lightning fast Improbable Aiming Skills but keep the actual consequences of those skills (i.e. messy holes in people's bodies) intact, he turns into a terrifying sociopath. After all, say what you will about Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, at least he didn't burst into a cheery musical number after shooting someone's fingers off before blowing his brains out.
  • Burn After Reading is this to Spy Fiction in general. The James Bond-esque super spy is actually just a self-important, washout data analyst who is writing a puffed-up memoir after an early retirement, the supposed conspiracy is really a completely pointless Gambit Pile Up kicked off by a dumb mistake, the civilians drawn into the world of espionage are irrelevant idiots who have clearly watched too many spy movies, and none of the actual power players like the CIA or the Russians care one iota about any of it, preferring to forget the whole mess even happened.
  • Galaxy Quest is an obviously loving parody of Star Trek in which actors end up on a real spaceship modeled after the one in their show. Things start out shaky but by the end they're coping beautifully.
  • Brazil is one for Dystopian fiction like Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World. While Sam Lowry lives in a world that is equal parts totalitarian bureaucracy and vapid consumerist orgy, most of it is played for laughs and the track record of the dystopian superstate isn't that impressive. The plot of the film hinges on an insect causing a single computer error that results in an innocent man being arrested by the Secret Police, none of the institutions are willing to admit their mistake which the main character attempts in vain to correct, and the fugitive Rebel Leader is a dapper scoundrel who can easily subvert the State. At the end, Sam permanently escapes the dystopia by just going into his Happy Place.
  • The Cable Guy was a departure for Jim Carrey's A-list vehicles in that the title character is more or less who a character like Ace Ventura — a motormouthed Trickster who's extremely physical, outgoing and constantly dropping pop culture references — would be in a realistic setting, as opposed to an eccentric adventure-heavy world. The Cable Guy constantly needs to be the center of attention, and is annoying, manipulative, and mentally unstable owing to a lifetime of being brought up by television, resulting in a Black Comedy that shades into horror territory.
  • The Return of the Living Dead was the deconstructive parody of the zombie movie. The main characters are a gang of punks who revel in nihilism and seem to be the kind of characters who would thrive in an apocalyptic scenario. That is until a zombie plague breaks out, and they are just as defenseless as everybody else. The movie also points out the reality of how unstoppable an undead menace would actually be. Burt and Ernie try to stop a zombie by removing its head, but the result is just a headless zombie chasing them. Even completely incinerating its body in a furnace causes the fumes to rain down on a graveyard and resurrect every corpse inside it. The logic of a zombie's very existence means that there shouldn't be an easy way to "kill them" anyway like in other zombie fiction.

    Literature 
  • Don Quixote is most likely the Trope Maker, parodying the chivalric romance genre by showing what would happen if a crazy fanboy actually tried to be a knight errant in a mundane, often cynical setting where things like magic, free lodging for knights, and courtly love don’t actually work.
  • The Sir Apropos of Nothing books are like this of fantasy, part of the time. The other parts are a more of a straight deconstruction.
  • Several of the Discworld books, for fantasy and whatever other genres Terry Pratchett feels like.
    • The first two books are split into multiple sections, each of which targets a specific fantasy genre/author. There are pastiches of Conan the Barbarian, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the Dragonriders of Pern novels (complete with idiosyncratic punctuation in the middle of names, in Pratchett's case), and the Cthulhu Mythos, just to name a few.
    • Hogfather: the series deconstructs Pascal's wager (the notion that it is existentially safer to believe in God than not to) with Ventre, an Expy of Pascal, dying and waking up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..."
    • Small Gods is one of these for extremist religions, Night Watch is one for Les Misérables, and many of the Witches and Tiffany Aching novels are this for fairy tales in general.
    • And Maskerade to The Phantom of the Opera, and the idea that the Phantom being dashing and romantic means the fact he kills people for petty reasons isn't a big deal.
  • Stephen Fry's The Stars' Tennis Balls (or Revenge in America) is a modern retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo that is like this in respect to the original novel. While it's partly a parody of the original (as seen in giving the characters names that are are anagrams/plays on the original — like calling the equivalent of Mercedes Portia), it totally deconstructs the idea that the behavior Dantes engaged in when taking revenge could be seen as just in any way. It does this by making the enemies more sympathetic and the revenge Darker and Edgier, and the ultimate feeling you get is that, rather than being sympathetic or at least a Magnificent Bastard, the Dantes-equivalent is a petty and cruel Smug Snake.
  • Some literary scholars say The Fall Of The House Of Usher is a parody of Gothic Horror, what with Roderick Usher being infected with a disease that heightens his senses making him (and the reader) believe the house is scarier than it really is.
  • The Barry Trotter series has elements of this (for example, its version of Quidditch).
  • Robert A. Heinlein:
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series is this for the Sci-Fi genre. The Big Good is just some guy who happens to be friends with an alien, the evil empire style characters are a bunch of horrible marksmen whose deadliest weapon is their horrendous poetry, and the Robot Buddy is a rude, paranoid, and clincally depressed Deadpan Snarker.
    • It's more specifically one of these for Doctor Who, which Douglas Adams was a script editor on at the time he wrote the first book. Particularly, it deals with the concept of a mild-mannered Earth person being taken off into a Human Alien, BBC Quarry-filled version of space as the companion of an oddball, bohemian alien traveller in a stolen time-travelling ship by showing just how boring, depressing and hopeless a universe like that would be to travel in. There are two separate duos with a Doctor-and-companion dynamic: Arthur and Ford, and Trillian and Zaphod. In the case of the first two, Arthur only leaves for space because his home, where he'd rather be, has been destroyed, he almost constantly moans about how much he'd prefer to be there, and both characters have very little idea of what's going on. The one time Arthur does enjoy space travel is the first time he lands on Magrathea, which everyone else thinks is a dump. In the case of the latter two, Zaphod's egotistical, flaky personality, extremely high intelligence and constant attention-seeking isn't redeemed by heroism, like in the case of the Doctor - while there is more depth to him than appears at first, he is every bit as selfish and unempathetic as someone who acted like the Doctor would have to be in real life. Also, unlike the Doctor, who constantly took sexy, clever Earth girl companions with him but was written relatively asexual during Adams's tenure due to the show being at least nominally for children, Zaphod's sexy, clever Earth girl companion is specifically noted to be a hot girl he picked up at a party for her looks.
  • John Scalzi's book Redshirts relentlessly spoofs Star Trek: The Original Series, starting with deconstructing the entire concept of the Red Shirt by making the random ensigns who in TOS would be Red Shirts the protagonists. The tagline of the book is, "They were expendable ... until they started comparing notes." Early on Scalzi makes fun of the idea that the command crew is always on away missions by putting a navigator on the team to study a plague. When he gets infected, Scalzi pokes fun at Star Trek's habitual technobabble by telling the viewpoint character that they need a counter-bacterial, with said character wondering why they don't just call it a vaccine. And that's just the first 40 pages.
  • Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is this to conspiracy theories and literature based on them.
  • Jane Austen's earlier works Love and Freindship and Northanger Abbey parodied melodramas and gothic romances respectively.
  • Caitlin R. Kiernan's Blood Oranges does this for Urban Fantasy.
  • The novelisation of Development Hell Doctor Who episode "Shada" parody-deconstructs the treatment of young human female companions in the series. When the Doctor charges into the room of Genre Savvy science student Clare to use her as The Watson despite her impressive intelligence, she finds herself bowled over by his force of personality and starts doing what he wants because that just feels like what she ought to do, while constantly noting in her internal monologue that her actions are nonsensical. She also realises that she keeps acting like a Neutral Female despite that not being her normal personality, and so the third time a male character orders her to sit tight and stay out of trouble, she snaps, and decides she's going to take the story Off the Rails and solve the mystery on her own. Her attempts to do so lead to her communicating with the dead Professor Chronotis, absorbing Time Lord knowledge of TARDIS flight and rescuing her love interest, Chris - who keeps noting in his internal monologue that he keeps acting "girly" and "clueless" so the Doctor can explain things to him.
  • Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw deconstructs the assumptions and tropes of Victorian novels by the likes of Anthony Trollope by displaying an alien society in which they actually make sense.
  • Robert Barr's The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont deconstruct the tropes of Sherlock Holmes and his many imitators. Valmont is a brilliant detective who's prepared to go beyond the law to get his man; in one story this ends with the criminal in question pointing out that since Valmont has no official standing and his evidence was obtained illegally, there's no way the police would even make an arrest, let alone bring the case to court.
  • Pinot Noir is primarily a wacky deconstruction of action B-flicks and Wide-Open Sandbox video games, amping up the insanity of certain action tropes for comedy, while presenting a protagonist in a crapsack city who only kills because he wants some sleep.
  • The Hero Who Returned Remains the Strongest in the Modern World:
    • Kaguya is one of the archetypical Tsundere. She treats Daiki like dirt at first, insulting him repeatedly to his face and hoping to never see his face again until he realizes the immense power he's hiding. It also becomes blatantly clear that Kaguya's Alpha Bitch personality is genuine, but it's also deprived her of a proper social life. Because of this, she's completely clueless socially and jumps at the opportunity to become message buddies with Daiki, quickly escalating to phone sex to his disgust and bewilderment. Daiki ends up more annoyed with her antics than anything, but in the few moments where she's being 100% sincere and thankful to him, he and the audience can see that she's beautiful and is genuinely in love with him.
    • Lela is one to the Foreign Exchange Student. Lela is a Finnish-French-Russian-Japanese exchange student who quickly becomes the talk of the class due to her exotic looks and eccentric personality. But it's obvious that she has no idea how to conduct herself in proper Japanese society due to hopping all over the world as a Church Militant monster assassin for the Vatican. Daiki finds her calling him "Master" for outclassing her so badly more exhausting and her loud, haughty personality doesn't win her any points with the equally proud Kaguya.
  • KonoSuba does this to the light novel subgenre where an ordinary person is transported or reincarnated to an RPG-like world, and RPGs to a lesser extent. The protagonists of these novels usually thrive in the new world, have a powerful cheat item or ability, and even gain a harem party to boot, but this trend doesn't seem to apply for Kazuma. This hapless protagonist gets stuck in a Crapsack World with very little RPG amenities, chooses a cheat item in the form of an insufferable goddess, has two party members who exaggerate their job class in both abilities and personality, etc. As a result, what would have been a grand adventure turns into a sitcom where the party can barely make ends meet.
  • The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System:
    • The series regularly pokes fun at the conventions of transmigration/isekai works, with Shen Qingqiu constantly arguing with the in-universe 'System' that keeps track of his 'Badass Points' and inflicts often blatantly unfair point penalties if he deviates too far from the work's original plot and cussing out the author every time he runs afoul of something he considers to have been bad writing or shameless pandering fanservice in the original novel. At the same time, it also has more serious scenes that show how the transmigrated Shen Qingqiu discovrs that reading and criticizing a story is much different from actually having to live through the story and getting to know the characters he had dismissed as just canon fodder in his readthrough as real people he comes to genuinely care for, as well as how his assumptions from reading the original novel causes him to have some major blind spots about how the story and his characters are no longer the same as the ones he read about, especially in regards to the novel's protagonist Luo Binghe.
    • Luo Binghe serves as both a parody and deconstruction of male power fantasy Gary Stu protagonists. On the light-hearted parody side, the series repeatedly lampoons how his protagonist Plot Armor is so indestructible that Contrived Coincidences will occur just to make sure he never dies and how the story warps around his character so much that its System literally won't let Shen Qingqiu progress until he makes sure that Binghe will experience all the plot events he needs to go through to unlock his absurdly powerful abilities. On the more serious deconstruction side, it's shown that all these plot events Binghe had to go through to become an overpowered lord — including being betrayed by his teacher and spending at least three years undergoing Training from Hell in another world — left him with deep emotional scars that his powers can't compensate for and that having all the powerups, martial victories, and harem sex in the world does not necessarily equal happiness, with one of the canonical extras showing that the Binghe who never formed a harem and gave up his sword but found love with another man is far happier than the original Binghe who leads a lonely, loveless life even with hundreds of allies and harem members at his beck and call.
  • T.E.D. Klein's work serves as this for the Cosmic Horror Story. While the core themes of the genre tend to be played straight, a lot of tropes are frequently subverted, subtly satirized, or turned on their head.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Boris, being a series about a troupe making a TV series, criticizes and mocks in a very humouristic way Italian fictional works of the 90's and the 2000's and all their associated tropes, often on a meta level, showing why said tropes happen in these kind of fictional works, as well as the entire Italian television industry.
  • The Greatest American Hero does this with Comic Book Superheroes.
  • Before that, in the 1960s, there was Captain Nice (NBC) and Mr. Terrific (CBS), both which were made to capitalize on the Batman (1966) craze at the time.
  • For that matter, the first season of Batman (1966) was itself one of these, as was Batman: The Movie. In the pilot, the Riddler tricks Batman into falsely arresting him so he can make a Frivolous Lawsuit for a million dollars, exposing Batman’s Secret Identity. The second episode shows the Penguin taking advantage of Batman’s Bat Deduction to commit crimes. Mr. Freeze is pretty cunning. Batman The Movie ends lampshading Reed Richards Is Useless when Batman refuses Robin’s idea to alter the personalities of the world leaders for the betterment of the world (and then exactly that happens). The next two seasons suffer great Seasonal Rot and were examples of Indecisive Parody.
  • This was a staple of Chappelle's Show.
    • "Dude's Night Out" was a more realistic beer commercial. Their activities included getting into barfights (and losing), defecating in public, and having sex with transvestite prostitutes.
    • The "When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong" skits show why "gangsta" behavior is usually a bad idea.
    • Don't forget the "realistic" versions of movies like Pretty Woman.
  • Community takes its basic sitcom premise and uses it mock and toy with as many genres and storytelling tropes as possible.
  • Derry Girls: The episode "Ms De Brún and the Child of Prague" is a deconstruction of "inspirational teacher" movies like Dead Poets Society. It's demonstrated that the qualities that make someone a Cool Teacher don't necessarily make them a good teacher. Ms De Brún inviting the gang around to her house in the evening is rightly called out as inappropriate. Her laidback attitude comes across as a Blithe Spirit, until it's ultimately revealed to be because she's just an Apathetic Teacher. She ends up quitting this job for a better one rather than being forced out by Obstructive Bureaucrats as would be expected in such a film.
  • Glee is this to High School Musical, when it's not being High School Musical done right.
    Rachel: There is NOTHING ironic about show choir!
  • The Good Guys does this to the idea of the Cowboy Cop and other action-movie tropes. (It was created by Matt Nix, the creator of Burn Notice.) The cop in question is an older detective — paired with a young, By-the-Book Cop — who's mentally stuck in The '80s, unable to adjust to changed police methods or even basic fashion. The only reason he's even still on the force is that he rescued a VIP some time ago, at the cost of his partner having a nervous breakdown when he forced him to jump from one moving car to another, a typical cop-movie stunt. At the end of the first episode, they're both dressed down for the dozens of rules of police procedure they managed to break—including Armed Altruism, BTW—and he asks when they're getting their medal. And all of it is played for laughs.
    • And again with the Gut Feeling in a later episode. The feeling is correct, but the bulk of the police force thinks they were catching the bad guys. What they've actually got are the decoys(who thought they were the only bank robbers), and the real thieves see our heroes at their intended target and flee. With no evidence, Jack and Dan's boss chalks it all up to Dan's crazy rubbing off on Jack.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
    • The show as a whole is a deconstruction of formularic sitcoms like Friends and Cheers. It points out how a self-centered group like that would constantly drag each other down, bring out each other's very worst sides, and uses continuity to show how they slowly ruin the lives of people along the way and constantly stunt and prevent each other's occasional attempts at improving themselves. Dennis, in particular, tackles The Casanova by having his actions involve emotionally manipulating women to the point of approaching outright rape. Charlie also takes The Ditz to extremes by having an unspecified disorder and showing how, despite being probably the nicest member of the gang overall, is still dangerous and reckless as a result. The show's original title, It's Always Sunny on Television, would have made the deconstruction more overt.
    • "The Gang Hit the Slopes" mocks 1980s ski slope sex-comedies by showing how disturbing guys leering after nude women all the time is and what happens when those "cool kids" grow up into even more skeevy adults.
  • Mitchell and Webb as a couple who are sick of having James Bond show up at their parties.
    Webb: It's Moneypenny I feel sorry for. Did you see when I was going around with the voddy?
    Mitchell: What?
    Webb: Well, I said to Moneypenny, "Can you manage another finger in there?", meaning —
    Mitchell: Finger of vodka in her glass of drink.
    Webb: Exactly!
    Mitchell: Self-explanatory.
    Webb: Yeah! And then James starts rolling his eyes like he's having some sort of stroke and says, "Oh, you can always get another finger inside Moneypenny!"
    Mitchell: HE SAID WHAT?
    Webb: Literally did not know where to look.
    • Later on in this sketch he brutally attacks someone for an offhand comment and then makes a trademark quip about it. The outrage is as much about the fact that the quip wasn't very good as that he threw someone out of a window.
    • They did a similar dialogue with Scooby-Doo.
      Webb: It's a shame, because he's clearly invested so much time in teaching that dog to talk and it just can't.
      Mitchell: Whereas the dog's nephew actually talks quite well.
      Webb: A little precocious though, isn't he?
      Mitchell: Yes, but I think one can forgive that of a talking dog.
    • In another sketch that parodies Casino Royale (2006):
      Agent: And Suave? Good luck.
      Suave: I won't need luck.
      Agent: [Beat] You're going to a casino.
      Suave: [realization] Oh God, yes, that's right!
    • Coverage of People Buying a House and Then Living In It deconstructs property shows like Location, Location, Location by demonstrating that without flashy editing tricks and a loudly enthusiastic host, there is nothing whatsoever exciting about televising the process of buying a home and then renovating it. Both the host and the participant clearly find the whole premise utterly mundane and cannot bring themselves to feign any kind of enthusiasm for making a TV show about it.
      Host: So, to sum up, Geoff, who you don't know, has bought a house and is now living in it, having put up some shelves, and I think we can all agree that that's basically a good thing.
    • The Conspiracy Theory sketches parody popular conspiracies around such matters as the Moon Landing, the death of Princess Diana and the Roswell landings by framing them around three secret agents sitting around a table actually planning them out in exactly the way people theorise they happened, and thus showing how utterly nonsensical they actually are. To the point where at times even the agents themselves point out that what they're planning doesn't seem to really make sense.
  • The Late Late Show: Instead of having a talk show sidekick to laugh at the host's jokes and spout the occasional catchphrase, the show has Geoff Peterson, a robot that laughs at the host's jokes and spouts the occasional catchphrase.
    Geoff: Balls!
  • Can a court case be deconstructed? If so, then The Colbert Report's Colbert SuperPAC is playing every aspect of the Citizens United case to its logical extreme for as many laughs as possible, while making a mockery of the US political system. Even more brilliantly, by actually creating a political action committee, he basically conscripted Viacom and the Federal Election Commission into the joke against their will. He does things so ridiculous that they have to respond, then shows that the laws support what he just did. Maybe one of the finest real life deconstructions ever done.
  • The television career of popular UK comedy duo Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer revolves around deconstructive parodies of light entertainment. Reeves' career began in comedy clubs as a surreal exaggeration of the kind of versatile all-round entertainers who had flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, a la Bruce Forsyth and Des O'Connor. This continued with Vic Reeves Big Night Out, a deconstruction of television variety shows, and the sketch show The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. Shooting Stars was a deconstruction of celebrity panel games, and the duo's subsequent career has mined the same path.
  • Adam Ruins Everything is a Deconstruction of the Edutainment Show. Why does Adam spent his time bothering people with better things to do? Because he's a friendless know-it-all without better things to do who tries to make friends. And while the people Adam lectures may learn something useful, they don't grow to care for Adam as a human being. The show itself mocks various conventions of the society, like how forensic science, despite what a Forensic Drama will show, is deeply flawed, or how medical shows like The Doctor Oz Show are constantly feeding people misinformation about health.
  • Thad Castle from Blue Mountain State is one of they typical Jerk Jock with Testosterone Poisoning. His actions and behavior are not that much out of the ordinary for the character type, but Thad pushes it further and further to the point where early on you can tell that he's dangerously insane.
  • Scream After Dark, the aftershow to MTV's Scream: The TV Series, is this to talk shows like Talking Dead, After the Thrones, and After the Black that come right after popular TV shows, where a group of panelists discuss the events of the latest episode together with some of the cast and crew providing behind-the-scenes details. So, you think that these shows are nothing but frivolous behind-the-scenes trivia that doesn't really deepen one's understanding of the latest episode, and only serves as more promotional material? Well, Scream After Dark features made-up trivia designed to paint the cast and crew in the most unflattering light possible. The writing process is portrayed as throwing darts at a board to decide who to kill off this week, then spinning a wheel to decide where that person dies. The acting process is shown in detail, with two of the show's stars reading from a canned script for character reactions to recent deaths, one that is recycled over and over with minor variations each time someone dies. Lead actress Willa Fitzgerald gives a set tour that degenerates into an ill-informed rant about war and politics. The behind-the-scenes look at the actors' relationships portrays them as secretly hating one another. And it's all Played for Laughs.
  • The All That sketch "Have a Nice Day with Leroy and Fuzz" was this to edutainment shows like Sesame Street, namely by showing how a normal kid (Leroy) would react to having to deal with an annoying puppet character championing things that children tend to despise like homework and doing chores.
  • The Saturday Night Live "December to Remember" sketch parodies car commercials that suggest surprising your loved ones with a car for the holidays. A husband gifts his wife a Lexus, only making her furious that he bought a car without asking her, revealing that he doesn't know the complexities of buying a car beyond what they say in the commercial.
    Kathy: How much did you spend on this ridiculous car, Nathan?
    Nathan: It was only $3,999 due at signing. Four grand! It's not that much, babe!
    Kathy: And what about the monthly payment?
    Nathan: [Beat] The what?

    Music 
  • Tenacious D once applied the deconstructive parody approach to Author Tract music. After taking over "City Hall", the D are rulers of the world. They issue absurd decrees that show they really are the wrong sort of minds to make big, important world decisions. "From now on we'll travel in TUBES!"
  • The Gregory Brothers song "DJ Play My Song (No, Leave Me Alone)" spoofs the Exhort the Disc Jockey Song by raising the question of what kind of person would make repeated demands of the DJ in such a hyperbolic manner, disregarding his opinions, those of the other patrons, and the club's policies. And what this person must be like once the club closes. It doesn't end well for the DJ.
  • Maddie & Tae's song "Girl in a Country Song" is this to the "bro-country" style of country music. Most bro-country songs have lyrics about hot women, trucks, beer, and partying; "Girl in a Country Song" is sung from the perspective of a woman who's sick of being objectified in those kinds of songs. The singer says that anyone who asks her to "slide on over" is going to get a slap, that wearing the kind of Stripperiffic clothes seen in bro-country videos is really uncomfortable, that she has a name that isn't "pretty little thing", and that "George Strait never did it this way back in the old days" of country music.
  • Bob Rivers made a side career out of these, especially on the Twisted Christmas albums. The first one had a song about Santa getting stuck in the chimney and suffocating, and a "visit from St. Nick" where the "Nick" in question was a pastiche of Jack Nicholson characters. Another had a parody of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" named to "It's the Most Fattening Time of the Year" (complete with fitness guru Richard Simmons having a spoken-word bridge encouraging restraint). There's also the wicked "Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire" (parody of Nat King Cole's version of "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire"), where the parody Cole and Dave Seville (voiced by Pat Cashman, the announcer of Smash Brothers) get fed up enough with the smart-alek rodents to serve them up as Christmas dinner.
  • The Lonely Island's "Space Olympics" music video starts off by hyping up how awesome "space Olympics" would be...before demonstrating all the various mishaps that would probably happen: athletes only get one meal per day because of food budget limitations, there's no light or sound (on the plus side, no curfew!), "minor scheduling adjustments" are made such as several events getting cancelled and all other events pending, the oxygen aboard the station runs out, and last but not least, someone accidentally self-destructs the entire station.
  • "That Song Again" by Jim Haynes is a Take That! to Greg Champion's "I Made a Hundred" sung to the same tune. Most of the lyrics are complaining about "that wretched cricket song" being played on the radio show Australia All Over every Sunday morning, but a couple of verses get into this territory:
    Some bloke made a hundred in the backyard at home.
    Prob'ly tore his mother's lawn up, and broke the garden gnome.
    I hate to think what happened to the poor old garden bed.
    And then to cap it all off, he wrecked the old man's shed.
    What kind of a bloke goes all day, hoggin' the bloomin' bat?
    I'll bet the rest of the family reckon he's a selfish rat.
    And I question his achievement, on that there is some doubt
    'cos over the fence and windows, that's surely six and out.

    Radio 
  • A constant theme of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme:
    • For example, one sketch did a deconstruction on The Emperor's New Clothes, showing the Emperor so traumatised by the experience that he now overdresses due to paranoia that everyone can see his 'winkie', and refuses to fund inventions that appear invisible - causing him to turn down inventors who have invented the telephone as soon as they mention that the waves of transmission are 'invisible'.
    • Another sketch parodied Right Behind Me by having a character rant about his boss, ask "he's standing right behind me, isn't he?" and, when people point out that the boss has long left the office, the character admits that he's 'a sitcom character' and, in the manner of someone admitting they have an OCD variant, can't bear it if the situation doesn't resolve humorously.
  • Whatever Happened To does this, taking apart the mythos of popular children's characters. For example, the Susan Foreman episode (from Doctor Who) goes into detail about being a schoolgirl time-traveller with two teachers — she hated time-travelling because she was missing all her O-levels, Ian developed "a bloodlust" after killing his first Dalek, it's heavily implied Barbara descended into alcoholism, and she believes the reason the Doctor left her on Earth with her Love Interest (from the Who serial "The Dalek Invasion of Earth") was because she was hindering his capacity to impress young women, which he later improved by "regenerating younger" (Jo Grant denies that anything happened). Even the Strangled by the Red String nature of her relationship with David is mocked — "I was sixteen! I was in love with someone all the time!" — and she only makes it back to her own time by contacting her family on Gallifrey. When she gets back to Earth she finds Ian and Barbara no longer remember their travels thanks to a time paradox erasing the events from history, and when rumour gets out that she's been travelling with Ian it's treated like accusations of teacher sexual assault. Even when Susan shows someone her souvenirs from time travel, she gets accused from stealing them from the British Museum and sent to a young offender's institute. Of course, it's all Played for Laughs with a spoonful of outright ridiculous, like extremely camp Thals and Barbara being mistaken for a goddess (from "The Aztecs") because of her massive bouffant.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Warhammer is practically overall one of High Fantasy, with copious amounts of Black Comedy.
    • Our Dwarfs are so overly stubborn and honour-obsessed that they subscribe to Honour Before Reason and Revenge Before Reason. The Dwarfs write every wrong against their race down in a big Book of Grudges with certain requirements to be fulfilled; if any Dwarfs happen to die attempting to right the grudge then they go down as separate grudges to be fulfilled later. Dwarfs never forgive or forget any slight, no matter how minor, and should you incur a grudge and die before the Dwarfs can come to right it, they will take it out on your descendants or powerbase instead. The result is that the Dwarfs are constantly at war with basically everybody and quite quickly dying out.
    • Bretonnia is a deconstructive parody of Arthurian Legend and Chivalric Romance, with the flaws of real feudalism exaggerated to comical degrees. Bretonnia's nobility enjoy basically complete infallibility; they can take 90% of a peasant's crop and kill them for just about any reason. Marriage between nobles and peasants is completely unheard of, and peasants graduating up to nobility has happened only three times in the kingdom's entire history - these lines all died out immediately because their children were peasants by default, and it is even implied that these self-made nobles were betrayed and killed off by the rest of the nobility as they gave a positive example to the other commoners. Bretonnian peasants are stupid (as peasants are killed if they are caught learning how to read) and very obviously inbred, having walleyes and hunchbacks and extra fingers on their hands; nobles are on the other hand so beautiful that they put elves to shame. Speaking of elves, there's also the heavy implication that the kingdom's entire religion centred around the Lady of the Lake is a farce the Wood Elves continue to use to manipulate the kingdom into being a buffer state: blackpowder weapons (which are common in the Empire over the border) and heavy industry are forbidden by the Cult of the Lady, keeping Bretonnia in a state of perpetual Medieval Stasis.
    • The High Elves deconstruct and parody a lot of elven tropes and stereotypes. They're a long-lived, artistic, beautiful people that are great at everything, with a competent government led by a wise, politically savvy king backed by three of the most powerful people in the world. They're also a race of petty egomaniacs. This led to them becoming a Dying Race after the Dark Elves pulled a False Flag Attack on the Dwarfs (mentioned above) and the then-King of the Elves was too proud to even talk to the dwarf ambassador, then shaved the dwarf's beard for getting on his nerves. The ensuing war was the most violent in Warhammer history, nearly destroyed both races, and cost the High Elves most of their leadership, most of their military, most of their population, and an irreplaceable artifact or three. In the modern eras they're not any better; almost none of the elven provinces get along, the nobility still forms a Decadent Court that hamstrings the few competent people who are supposed to be in charge, they piss off every other race who even thinks of working with them, and the king's three powerful leaders are always too busy putting out fires at home, starting various kinds of drama between themselves, or undermining his authority to do much to help him lead. This all means the high elves are basically a non-factor in the world at large and they're drifting ever closer to extinction because they won't stop squabbling with each other long enough to fix any problems, defeat any of their many enemies (which by now includes basically everyone), or even just repopulate their race, and none of the rest of the world cares. Just to add insult to injury, both the Dark Elves and the Wood Elves are much more functional and successful than their parent people.
  • There's an element of this in the sister game Warhammer 40,000, as well. To name just one example, the Orks put a spin on the Alien Invasion by having literally no reason to fight with other species. They don't want to conquer anything, they don't want resources, they're not even doing it because they dislike you. It's just that they literally need to fight - they require battle the same way other species need food and water. They're living weapons that were never told they could stop - all they know is fighting. If they can't invade someone else, they'll fight each other just to have someone to fight against.

    Video Games 

  • Achievement Unlocked and Achievement Unlocked 2 by jmtb02 both parody the common game concept of unlocking achievements. In these games, unlocking all the achievements is the whole point of the game and there are hundreds of them for ridiculous things such as killing yourself 100 times and visiting the hint page.
  • Baldur's Gate gives the player a chance to respond, in character, to a hermit who seeks out the party to drop an obscure hint in just about exactly the way most players wish they could respond.
    "Ok, I've just about had my FILL of riddle asking, quest assigning, insult throwing, pun hurling, hostage taking, iron mongering, smart arsed fools, freaks, and felons that continually test my will, mettle, strength, intelligence, and most of all, patience! If you've got a straight answer ANYWHERE in that bent little head of yours, I want to hear it pretty damn quick or I'm going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it lengthwise into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the nine hells themselves wouldn't touch it with a twenty-foot rusty halberd! Have I MADE myself perfectly CLEAR?!"
  • The Borderlands games are likely a deconstruction of the "murder hobo" stereotype, which is basically an RPG player who only cares about killing stuff and getting loot. On Pandora, virtually everyone is a murder hobo (even the good guys), with predictable results: Pandora is a lawless Death World where one can get killed at the drop of a hat. Even the more "civilized" planets in the third game (such as Promethia) are full of barely restrained violence.
  • Bulletstorm is about Space Marines who discovered they were being manipulated into killing innocent people by their corrupt superior. Upon finding out, they become Space Pirates. Ten years later, the leader and Player Character is a self-destructive alcoholic, and his rash decision to go after their old boss when he shows up get most of his crew killed and one seriously harmed. In addition to the guilt over the assassinations his team unwittingly performed, he feels guilty about harming his crew, and desperately tries to reconcile with the only surviving one, who rebuffs his advances. Said survivor, Ishi, has been turned into a cyborg by extremely painful surgery to combine him with a robot. The central gameplay gimmick of the game, The Leash, was designed by their corrupt superior to reward his men for killing people in creative ways, much like some sort of video game. The planet most of the game takes place on is a failed resort world, and is extremely colorful and varied, instead of the usual Real Is Brown. If it weren't for the swearing, fun, and Stuff Blowing Up, it would be a very dark game.
  • Deconstruction Games in general are usually parodies, though there have been some jarring exceptions.
  • Final Fantasy V has the Idiot Hero Bartz annoying the sage Guido with him repeatedly responding to the latter's exposition with an expositionary question, which named the exact same thing Guido expositioned about. The Big Bad Exdeath also comes across as being a parody of the stereotypical Tin Tyrant Evil Overlord, as well as possibly villains from FF's genre in general, what with his bombastic tendencies and over-the top dialogue. FFV's status as a parody is more apparent in the GBA version's English translation of the game than any of the preceding translations.
  • Fire Emblem Engage exaggerates and mocks Character Shilling, specifically the form directed towards the Avatar common to later Fire Emblem games. In most Fire Emblem games with Avatars, the other characters tend to have a very worshipful attitude towards the Avatar, constantly praising their strength, charisma, and intelligence as second-to-none. Engage exaggerates this aspect to the point of the other characters literally worshipping Alear as a deity. As for Alear's part, they are weirded out at best and at worst uncomfortable with this very treatment, seeing it as preventing them from making meaningful connections with others. Most of Alear's support conversations have the other characters eventually drop their worship towards them, instead coming to see them as a friend and equal.
  • I Wanna Be the Guy deconstructs platform games by setting it in an Everything Trying to Kill You world (and by everything, we mean everything).
  • Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent is a Deconstructive Parody of Professor Layton. Even though Tethers is in an FBI division dedicated to puzzles, he's aware that there are far more puzzles in this town than there should be. It's revealed that the gnomes he sees speak to the townsfolk in puzzles and caused a weird cult-ish group in the town.
  • The Lee-Lee's Quest games give this treatment to the Super Mario Bros. 2D platforming games. Lee-Lee is actually the real bad guy who repeatedly abducts another man's girl and murders hundreds of innocents along the way, while pointlessly collecting shovels (coins) and fruits (power ups). The only mushroom in the game is poisonous, jumping into the game's only item block caves your skull in and kills you, the bird you hatch from an egg to ride jumps off a cliff when you hop on it, and stars turn your controls backwards.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2 deconstructs the entire idea of The Chosen One by featuring too many Heroes of Another Story to count. It also mocks D&D archetypes left and right (the ridiculously-over-the-top nature-loving elf, for instance), as well as badly designed areas in fan modules for NWN1 (the Orc Caves), and long and seemingly significant plot sections that end up not mattering (like the Ember trial). The script regularly veers into the openly snarky. The whole thing kinda resembles Forgotten Realms-meets-Slayers. Makes sense when you remember who the dev team is.
  • Palworld is an Affectionate Parody that takes a serious look at what kind of world where Mons exist in would be like.
    • Something the game emphasizes the logical point of a world of semi-sapient Mons is that they would be used just as much for combat as they would for basic utility. Fire-type Pals help light campfires and keep you warm, Electric-type Pals are great as a Living Battery, and can even be used to electrocute fish for each catching, Water-type Pals are great for drinking water and watering plants...and on the darker side of this, it also means that Pals would be misused and exploited as slave labor or resources.
    • The game also deconstructs the idea of Mons supplanting human weaponry, by making a case that a Death World full of such creatures you make a great case for human weaponry. Pals in-game operate best as backup fighters, as it's noted that it would be realistically hard to make a fighter of what's effectively a wild animal (albeit a highly intelligent and emotionally capable one), not to mention dangerous given that virtually everything is trying to kill you. Guns, while it takes a lot to bring a Pal down, are very much the best shot a human has of defending themselves and are a reliable answer to Pals. One article even speculates that the question isn't "why would the world of Pokémon have guns?" and is moreso "why wouldn't the world of Pokémon have guns?"
    • On a similar note, it also puts aside the honor-based turn-based combat of normal Pokémon to point out that pragmatism is going to win you the day. If you do not already have a Pal, one of the ways that you can weaken a Pal before capturing the Pal involves hitting a Pal with a bat. There's also nothing against you simply shooting an enemy Pal trainer or ganging up on a Pal until it's unconscious, and from what has been teased, these aren't just viable strategies but optimal too.
    • Palworld is also one of the very few Mons Series to answer a deeply uncomfortable question: "If Pals and humans share a common ancestor, does that mean you can capture humans in Pal Spheres?" The answer here, of course, is "Yes": capturing humans inside of Spheres—while considered inhumane and very illegal—can, and does, happen, and allows the Pal trainer to potentially sell them off on the black market. Or even butcher them.
    • Tying in with how it deconstructs the idea of Mons replacing human weaponry, the villain teams will not engage you in a 1-on-1 battle with mons and then stand aside once they're beaten. Instead, they'll attack you en masse with everything from guns to crossbows to wooden clubs and they will not stop until you either kill them or they kill you.
  • Similarly, Planescape: Torment deconstructs the other side of the coin with this gem from an elderly woman when she's interrogated by the Player Character.
    "I'll bet ye've got all sorts o' barmy questions! (She mimics your heroic stance) Greetin's, I have some questions... can ye tell me about this place? Who's the Lady o' Pain? I'm lookin' fer the magic Girdle of Swank Iron, have ye seen it? Do ye know where a portal ta the 2,817th Plane o' the Abyss might be? Do ye know where the Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum is?"
  • Pokémon has PETA's satirical parody, Pokémon Black and Blue - Gotta Free 'Em All, which tries to deconstruct the whole monster-battling thing as if they were real cockfights where the Pokémon are seen as just objects. Hilariously enough, the Pokémon franchise itself had already deconstructed this exact same theme well over a year before PETA's game in the actual Pokémon Black and White games themselves, even going on to reconstruct the franchise's perceived problems in the process (not to mention using the games' Big Bad as a Take That!/deconstruction of PETA-style Moral Guardians all the while).
  • Songs for a Hero stars a protagonist who constantly acknowledges and mocks video game tropes in song. But it goes beyond endless Lampshade Hanging when we also see the protagonist questioning his sanity, and eventually learn that there's a cause for all the endless snakes and floating platforms and other videogamey things - aliens were experimenting on Earth and messing it up.
  • South Park: The Stick of Truth illustrates how ridiculous and Unfortunate Implications-laden the "racial perk" trope many role-playing games use is by applying it to a real-life race, namely...the Jews.
    • In a similar vein, the sequel lets the protagonist choose their skin color, but it calls it a difficulty setting.
  • Wrestling Mpire deconstructs pro wrestling video games. Wrestlers can be champions one minute and jobbers the next. They can be injured but a vindictive booker will have them wrestle anyway. They might never even get signed to a promotion. And no matter how great a career goes, it will end in retirement or death. But always in a fun, fun way.
  • You Are Not The Hero is an Action RPG about a typical NPC who chases down some traditional RPG "heroes" who barged into her house and took her pendant, spoofing the hell out of several other RPG tropes along the way. Public Service Announcement from the developer: How to prevent heroes from barging into your home and stealing your stuff.

    Visual Novels 
  • Hatoful Boyfriend is an Affectionate Parody of Dating Sims in most of its romance routes where you date pigeons, but veers into this territory in Shuu's route and the Bad Boys Love route. The former has Deconstruction happening with your attraction to a "bad boy" love interest resulting in not you reforming him but you getting killed and dismembered by him instead, and the latter demonstrates how a promise made by someone out of deep, unconditional love for another can have incredibly horrific consequences when that someone is a sociopath with an extremely warped view of love and loyalty. Rather unusually for this, it fits both aspects while never doing both at the same time.

    Web Animation 
  • Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles:
    • Overall, the series is a hilarious Genre Deconstruction of both sci-fi games and first-person shooters in general. Most notably, the series constantly parodies the Excuse Plot, with the series' Arc Words literally being "You ever wonder why we're here?". The first episode has Simmons pointing out to Grif that the Forever War between the Red and Blue Teams is completely pointless, since if one side were to win (or the other side were to pull out), the "victor" would just have two bases in the middle of a box canyon.
    • The series also points out that the entire conflict being a Hopeless War means that only the mindlessly loyal or very foolish would continue the fight. Therefore, everyone in the canyon (with the possible exceptions of Church and Tex, and even they still have their moments of insanity/stupidity) is some variant of idiotic or insane.
    • Relatedly, The Blood Gulch Chronicles also plays with both (platonic) Love Across Battlelines and Mission Control. Instead of having a clear and concise yet distant commander that efficiently helps them take on their enemy, the Reds and Blues both answer to Vic, who is Playing Both Sides and gives them all terrible advice so as to draw out their pointless conflict as long as possible. And as the series goes on, the Reds and Blues actually start to form a decent camaraderie with each othernote ... but their "friendship"/mutual respect only reaches to the same level as how well the individual teams work together.
    • On a less comedic note, the series also mocks countless video game tropes. The fact that the series' "war" is one massive "Capture the Flag" game is repeatedly pointed out to make no sense (with the Reds even realizing in Season 2 that it would be more trouble than it's worth to take Blue Team's flag, and so they ask for it to "stay exactly where it is!"), and only one of the main villains - Agent Wyoming - is able to respawn upon death, which everyone else views as terrifying.
  • Helluva Boss desconstructs and parodies both the Byronic Hero and Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist archetypes. Blitzo is arrogant, foul-mouthed, rude, obnoxious and an all-around gigantic douchebag whose personality always makes a situation escalate to an insane degree before he's strangling or exchanging gunfire with someone. However, the series also makes it expressly clear that his awful personality has prevented him from developing any meaningful positive relationships no matter how badly he craves them(even estranging his own sister by being an asshole when trying to help her), and that he is unbearably lonely as a result.
  • Society of Virtue, like Dr. Havocs Diary, desconstructs everything about superheroes of the "Big Two" (Marvel Comics and DC): from superhero groups like Justice League/Avengers and the X-Men, to the Captain Patriotic, the urban vigilante à la Batman, to a hero's entire Rogues Gallery.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: Time Trouble deconstructs a common joke that was especially popular around the time Sonic Generations was announced: the "Classic" version of Sonic learning from his current "Modern" self that the quality of his games have fallen over the years and that Mario beat him in the console wars. Whereas most of these jokes would typically end with something like Classic Sonic not taking it well or Modern Sonic preparing to soften the blow, Time Trouble extends and examines this joke further. While the "current" Sonic (a pastiche of his "Modern" and "Boom" selves) does initially warn his Classic self to not do any 3D games, this only leads to even more unsavory timelines being created: underfunded, glitchy, freemium, Merchandise-Driven, sex toy and Rule 34 Sonics equally struggling to survive in the entertainment industry. At the same time, another Sonic from the future insists that the lack of 3D Sonic games was what caused the Saturn to fail, which isn't entirely false given how adamant a focus the industry had on 3D at that time. A possible message to take from this animation, if any, is that as unsatisfying as Sonic's Audience-Alienating Era may have been, there isn't a sole obvious reason for as to why it occurred, and there were still plenty of other ways in which it could've turned out for the worse.
  • Spyro's Bad Day rips apart the premise of the Spyro classic trilogy:
    • Spyro is repeatedly annoyed that for some reason, it's all up to him to save the day. He doesn't want to do it, basically gets forced into doing it, and all he wants to do is go home.
    • He also calls out that he's basically forced to be the hero in Avalar, since he can't go home otherwise:
      Professor: Well, it looks like you're stuck here; you're going to have to collect all of the things and then defeat Ripto!
      Spyro: No, this is extortion, this is bullcrap!
      Elora: Please, Spyro? We don't want to try anything else.
    • Turns out that getting all the things is a very, very painful process.
    • Instead of paying Moneybags, Spyro just charges through him.
    • Ripto realizes that the best way to deal with the angry Spyro is to simply give him what he wants: to go back home and never have to deal with this "extortion and bullcrap" ever again. It works and Ripto is victorious.
  • There's Something About Amy deconstructs Ron the Death Eater stories, specifically with how Amy's detractors commonly depict her as a Yandere Stalker with a Crush towards Sonic. Initially, the story starts off with her acting very much like she does in the series proper: pushy with her affection, but hardly threatening towards him. However, Tails manipulates her into a Sanity Slippage, which culminates in her Body Horror transformation and murder of Sonic. From this point, the story deviates from the typical Revenge Fic when it reveals that Sonic actually did love Amy back, but couldn't reciprocate his feelings; he too was manipulated by Tails in the exact same way. Furthermore, the "Tails" responsible for this series of events is not the real Tails, but the one seen in "Secret Histories"; the latter had murdered the former prior to the story. This effectively states that, in order for Amy to be truly unhinged, it would require influence from beyond what her series is normally capable of, and that it would lead to tragedy for everyone involved.

    Web Comics 
  • The Last Days of FOXHOUND. Sure, there's one metric fucktonne of swearing, and characters are deliberately exaggerated for laughs, but it does an excellent job of analyzing the why and how of the plot behind Metal Gear Solid. Plus, when you can make the characters' deaths in the actual game Tear Jerkers, you've done something worthy of Deconstruction.
  • Living With Insanity did an arc where David wrote a story about his Author Avatar saving a bunch of orphans from Saint Hitler and his stormtroopers (as in, actual Star Wars stormtroopers) who were obsessed with anal rape. It ended with the Marty's sexiness causing a lady Nazi to give up without a fight and Hitler surrendering for no real reason. And they all lived happily ever after. Except for Hitler, who died two weeks later of AIDS.
    • Just so no one thinks it was serious, the entire arc was called "Bad Writing".
  • Overlord Bob does this with viarous fantasy cliches - bunch of adventurers invades Evil Overlord's inner sanctuary and he uses their stereotypical flaws to defeat them and transform into viarous sexy creatures. In the end the same happens to him and his rival, evil sorcerer Tim. Maid's Quest, set in the same Universe, does the same with various stereotypical evil knights.
  • The Non-Adventures of Wonderella to so many superhero tropes.
  • Manly Guys Doing Manly Things to many video game tropes and the idea of Manly Men through showing how people with such severe Testosterone Poisoning would act in a fairly real world.
  • Garfield Minus Garfield is a deconstructive parody of its source material. Seeing as though Word of God apparently stated that Garfield never talked in the comic, both that and this show just how much of a wreck Jon really is.
  • Hero Material does this to The Hero's Journey. Sure, the characters saved the world, but none of them really learned anything or became better people through it. On top of that the world they ravaged through is left into chaos and destruction.
  • Filth Biscuit features the rewritten Robin Hood tale, Rob Ho & his Merry Bros, in which the legendary hero is recast as a hard-partying douchebag only interested in amusing himself and his equally obnoxious friends.
  • The Order of the Stick is ultimately one for Dungeons & Dragons, with a lot of the comic's humor comes from noting just how bizarre a lot of the game mechanics for D&D would look in a more "realistic" setting. One particular example is the Running Gag regarding the 25-word limit for sending, which results in amusing situations like Nale's Evil Gloating to Roy over having kidnapped his younger sister Julia anti-climatically cutting in and out in a similar manner to someone being in an area with poor cell reception.
  • Romantically Apocalyptic does this for a ton of apocalypse tropes. The dangerous mutants that inhabit the wasteland are harmless enough for the most part if left alone and avoided, and weren't even created by the radiation, but in a desperate attempt to create life. Apocalypse Anarchy is in affect, sure, but the roving bands of marauders frequently get themselves killed in petty gang wars or by the various threats in the wasteland they were too stupid to leave alone, and the more fortunate survivors are all just crazy people more concerned with staving off boredom that comes After the End, since there's basically nothing to do now that pretty much everyone's dead. The resident Crazy Survivalist Engineer isn't actually crazy, just an absurdly paranoid coward who tends to screw himself over because he constantly misjudges what constitutes a threat and what doesn't. The Wasteland Elder is a complete lunatic whose followers only listen to because they're either desperate, spineless, or equally deranged. Even the almost obligatory Mad Max-esque hardened, cynical badass loner with a Dark and Troubled Past is deconstructed through Snippy, who's shown to be a broken shell of a man who's desperately afraid of being alone.
  • The Everyone Is Home strip "Everyone Is Dead" pokes fun at the side-effects of filming the trailers for Ultimate: Inkling Girl has PTSD from witnessing the Smash logo, Mega Man, Luigi, and Dedede are dead, and Mario has his neck in a cast. When Sakurai asks for supporting characters for the next trailer, everyone who was left huddled in fear in the corner (and Olimar and Pit outright flew away). Although they recover a couple of strips later.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • Dexter's Laboratory had an episode where Dexter tries out different superpowers. This weighed heavily on the related trope, Required Secondary Powers.
  • South Park has the episode "Crippled Summer", which has a couple of Looney Tunes and its Amusing Injuries.
  • The Venture Bros. functions as both a Deconstruction and an Affectionate Parody of Jonny Quest and other action/adventure cartoons. Jonny actually shows up as a drug-addled, burned-out middle-aged man, raging against his negligent father and running scared from an old foe, Dr. Zin. Although a later appearance has shown that Jonny's recovered enough to converse with Zin like a normal person.
  • BoJack Horseman is a complete demolition of overused schmaltzy plots and characters to tell a dark and brutally honest character study. But, boy, when the series takes a break from depressing reality, it sure loves to play with every sitcom trope in the book, often by making them as ridiculous as possible while still ensuring reality will screw everyone's delusions.
  • Moral Orel deconstructs Leave It to Beaver and other family-oriented sitcoms from the 50s and 60s. Orel, the innocent All American Boy, is frequently exploited by the adults of Moralton, who are portrayed as shallow people using "family values" to justify their dysfunctional behavior. While it's initially played for laughs, the third season pulls no punches in showing just how messed-up the cast really is.
  • The premiere episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic quite extensively deconstructs the concept behind its parent franchise and the "girls' cartoon" genre codified by its predecessor shows, but plays all of its deconstructive elements for laughs (thanks mostly to Twilight playing the Straight Man to a cast of outlandish characters whose overbearing friendliness unwittingly results in the asocial Twilight becoming The Chew Toy).
    Twilight Sparkle: All the ponies in this town are crazy!
    • "Lesson Zero" shows what happens when an Obsessively Organized character in an Aesop-driven Edutainment Show is met with a situation where there isn't an Aesop for her to find. Namely, nightmarish psychotic breakdowns propped against a backdrop of facing the threat of being taken away from the friends that have come to mean so much to her. Thank God it's also one of the funniest episodes of the show, or this would all be incredibly bleak.
  • John Kricfalusi discussed how he used this in The Ren & Stimpy Show episode "Son of Stimpy" in a blog post about Fake Pathos. He made the episode as a satire of the then-recent trend of adding shallow sad moments in comedy movies and animated films, using every emotional tripwire in the book to make the audience cry over the most ridiculous plot element (namely Stimpy not being able to fart again).
    "I purposely made a cartoon that used some filmic tricks to make people cry just to show that it's not hard to do it. And I didn't have to shoot anyone's Mom either. I made people cry over the fact that Stimpy couldn't fart for a second time. I went out of my way to make the story have the most preposterous plot events in it-everything to undermine the seriousness of Stimpy's depression. Besides the mood tricks, I relied heavily on Stimpy and Ren's acting-the drawings of their expressions and their interactions. A lot of films will ignore this part of the pathos recipe. They rely on the filmic tricks and contrived story points."
  • Megas XLR is a Destructive Parody of the Humongous Mecha genre.
  • Family Guy is a Deconstructive Parody of the Dom Com genre — or more accurately, of straight parodies of the Dom Com genre, such as The Simpsons.
    • It also deconstructs some of the cartoon formulas (such as typical clichés, and cartoon anatomy), and shows what happens when reality kicks in.
  • Archer deconstructs every aspect of the Cold War era James Bond spy genre. Along with various elements of the action genre. Most consistently, guns being fired near someone's head causes ringing in the ears.
  • The Animaniacs short "All the Words in the English Language" deconstructs the Warners' long list songs by exaggerating it to have Yakko sing the entire dictionary and also get tired as the song goes on (he barely finishes it before fainting at the end), plus he makes a mistake on a word he can't pronounce.
  • Kaeloo deconstructs typical kids' cartoons like one might see on Nick Jr. by having the protagonist, Kaeloo, act like a kids' show character (e.g. putting emphasis on being nice, imagining things, and playing games), and the rest of the characters react like real people would ("Have you been smoking weed?").
  • Harley Quinn (2019) shows that being a Supervillain isn't just about villainy, but also to build your own brand. The plot kicks off with Harley breaking up with the Joker and trying to go solo, but she finds out that she needs a crew and a lair, for starters. Then there's also the standard of behaviour villains are expected to follow, and crossing that line would get you ostracized or suffer a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks: It should also be noted that a lot of the jokes in the series make fun of the plotlines that are typical for the series. For example, Boimler goes into a lengthy speech about how he's going to die if he leaves Starfleet (See Mythology Gag) or how Mariner deals with an Energy Being that attempts to take over the ship.
  • Smiling Friends is a darkly comedic deconstruction of series centering around the main characters helping a Woobie of the Week. Charlie and Pim's job is to do this, but their clients' problems are typically things they're not qualified to deal with, and the problems are generally solved by accident or things they had nothing to do with. And the clients themselves tend to be very dysfunctional people with complex and deep-rooted problems; some of them are nice enough if troubled people, while others are legitimately terrible people whose problems are entirely their own fault.

 
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Dr. Havoc's Diary

Action Boy proves to be far too young to be a proper superhero, physically and emotionally, when his arm gets broken by a bunch of bigger men toppling him over.

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I Want My Mommy!

Mr Burns' Flyin...

Thelma & Lo...

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Dr. Havoc's Diary

Action Boy proves to be far too young to be a proper superhero, physically and emotionally, when his arm gets broken by a bunch of bigger men toppling him over.

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Dr. Havoc's Diary

Mr Burns' Flyin...

Thelma & Lo...