Pastiche

A pastiche is a work done In the Style of another artist. It may reflect a single work by a single artist, or a body of work by one or more artists, or even an entire genre. The difference between a Fan Fic, which reuses characters or settings from another work, and a pastiche, is that the pastiche copies the tone and flavor of its original. A work can, of course, be both a fanfic and a pastiche, but pastiche is all about the style.

A pastiche may be created as an homage to the original artist, or it may be intended as a gentle parody. The distinction is not important—although an exaggerated parody that did not actually reflect the style of the original would not be a pastiche. A pastiche which doesn't show some respect for the original would be a very difficult thing to pull off. Most pastiches are created in a spirit of fun, which can often make it hard to determine whether the creator intended parody or homage—or even, possibly, both. (An exception to the just-for-fun rule is in Academia, where a pastiche may be created as a Deconstruction of the original, but such works rarely reach—or are intended for—a broad audience.)

A good pastiche can be a hard thing to pull off, and many an excellent artist has crashed and burned in the attempt. Using someone else's style is simply not an easy thing, especially without avoiding accusations of They Copied It, So It Sucks!. In fact, it's often inevitable that good pastiches will still get this accusation. Nevertheless, a decent pastiche is enjoyable enough for both artist and audience that there is no shortage of artists willing to give it a try.

See also Musical Pastiche. Compare Fan Fic, Original Flavor, Parody, Satire, Parodied Trope, Whole-Plot Reference and In the Style of.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In July of 2022, the Ford Motor Company released a two-minute advertisement for their souped-up off-road pickup truck, the F-150 Raptor R, titled "Raptor R: Scary Fast", as a pastiche of old horror movies. Comes complete with a grainy overlay at the beginning and the end, crimson-and-cobalt lighting galore, Jump Cuts and Smash Cuts, all set in the dead of night in a desert under a Gigantic Bad Moon Rising. It's Better Than It Sounds.

Anime & Manga

• Gekiganger 3, the Show Within a Show of Martian Successor Nadesico is a pastiche of classic Super Robot anime of the 1970s and '80s such as Getter Robo, Combattler V, and Voltes V.
• Phantom Thief Pokémon 7 is a pastiche of Gentleman Thief and Phantom Thief fiction. It would probably be a stereotypical example if it weren't for the fact it was a Pokémon spinoff.
• Yuriota ni Yuri wa Gohatto Desu?!: A pastiche of Maria Watches Over Us, and other works in the "yuri in a Catholic girls' school" genre. Fuyu is a fan of these works, and she attends Oshibana hoping to see similar yuri happen "in the wild" — and it does — but the sudden appearance of a Gyaru Girl throws a wrench into her plans and threatens to upset her beautiful yuri-centric worldview.

Art

• Pieter Bruegel the Elder's early works, especially "De Dulle Griet", were almost a pastiche of Hieronymus Bosch's art.
• Pastiches of Alphonse Mucha‘s poster art, with elegant women posing within stylised decorative frames, are practically a fan art genre in their own right.
  Sometimes I spend a lot of time coming up with clever art styles and visual references for the Skin Horse wallpapers, and sometimes I say, “Forget it, Mucha pastiches always look good.”

  — Shaenon K. Garrity, artist on Skin Horse

Comic Books

• The anthology series Batman: Black and White includes several examples:
  • "Batsman" is done in the style of a MAD Magazine parody.
  • "Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder" is drawn in the style of a Golden Age Batman comic and is written accordingly as well. Batman and Robin smile throughout the story, deliver wisecracks and best the villains via a clever scheme. The first page is a splash panel that looks like an old comic book cover, with the title appearing in the same style it used to on actual covers in those days.
• Robert Crumb also enjoys making pastiches of other comics now and then, like Omaha the Cat Dancer, for instance.
• De Kiekeboes: In the album "Vrouwen komen van Mars" the Kiekeboe family gets sucked into Marcel Kiekeboe's favorite childhood comic strip, which is a stylistic pastiche of many 1940s and 1950s Flemish comic strip series.
• Many of Alan Moore's works - especially in the latter portion of his career - are pastiches of one forerunner comic or another^note According to detractors like John Byrne, this is the only trick Moore has.. Perhaps the straightest example is his incomplete miniseries 1963, done in loving homage to Silver Age Marvel comics.

Fan Works

• The Disney fanfic Lost Tales of Fantasia, despite being deliberately darker than a typical Disney movie, still imitates the usual Disney format by excluding swearing and sex and having regular musical numbers.
• The Legend of Total Drama Island (LTDI) is a pastiche of The Book of the Thousand and One Nights, specifically the Mardrus & Mathers translation. Although The 1,001 Nights is a prose work, some of the component stories have a good deal of poetry. LTDI somewhat duplicates this feel by insertion of (mostly famous) poems at various points where they fit or enhance the scene's mood. These poems are usually part of the narrative, but characters occasionally recite them in-universe.
• Hans Von Hozel's... distinctive style has inspired these from other authors, particularly by way of The Weekly Hans von Hozel Challenge.
• The fanfiction Those Who Stand for Nothing Fall for Anything is Death Note redone as a pastiche of American Psycho, complete with a psychotic first-person Unreliable Narrator and overtones of political satire.
• Future Reunion is a fan comic based on the manga Sailor Moon. The artist's style in both artwork and storytelling ability is a pastiche and fanwork, near identical to the original work.
• Fortune_Lover_(TGS Beta)(SARU_rip)[T+Eng0.75_Sincere].zip is a pastiche of Creepypasta in the form of a discussion board reply that discusses her experience a Game Mod of unknown provenance. It's a rather emotional story, but strictly mundane.

Films — Animation

• Frozen II: Kristoff's song "Lost in the Woods" is a pastiche of power ballads from The '80s, with the visuals heavily inspired by the music videos of bands like REO Speedwagon.
• Monsters vs. Aliens is a pastiche of monster/sci-fi movies.
• Rango is a homage to Spaghetti Western films, full of references to classics of the genre with the twist of starring anthropomorphic Civilized Animals. It has many elements of those movies, such as a lone gunslinger arriving at a town taken by corruption and archetypes portrayed by different animals, and Western star Clint Eastwood is even referenced through the form of the Spirit of the West.
• Shrek: Besides Fairy Tales, the spin-off movies Puss in Boots (2011) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish draw heavily from swashbuckling adventure movies, including one of Puss' main inspirations, Zorro, as well as Spaghetti Westerns. The director of the latter film cited The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in particular as an influence.

Films — Live-Action

• The Artist is a huge tribute to silent films, as well as Hitchcock, Ford, and other early black-and-white filmmakers.
• The Fifth Element was Luc Besson's love letter to Métal Hurlant. Two of his favorite artists, Jean "Moebius" Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézieres, worked as art directors on the film.
• Down with Love serves as a glorious pastiche of wacky 60s sex comedies. Most specifically the Doris Day-Rock Hudson ones.
• Kung Pow! is a stylistically great, but otherwise forgettable parody of 1970s Asian martial arts films.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie is a pastiche of Victorian-era stories.
• Most films by Mel Brooks also fit in this trope. The style, the setting, the characters, the camera work are all done with love for the genre he is trying to spoof.
• Quentin Tarantino's films are generally pastiches of their respective genres.
• Pacific Rim is one giant love letter from Guillermo del Toro to the kaiju and mecha genres.
• Shaun of the Dead is a pastiche of various horror movies, including An American Werewolf in London, Evil Dead 2 and Night of the Living Dead (1968).
• Super 8 is a stylistic tribute to the classic works of Steven Spielberg, and to a lesser extent, Joe Dante, in the early 1980's.
• Cloud Atlas: Every story. Most notable in Sonmi's chapters. The film even adds some wonderful Gun Kata straight out of Equilibrium to her story.
• DISCO (2017) is a pastiche of '70's cinema, particularly Saturday Night Fever.
• Joker, based on DC Comics' popular Batman villain, is a pastiche of Martin Scorsese's early works, including Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy.
• Shirley is a pastiche of Shirley Jackson's work, which is also the main conflict and discussed numerous times. Of Shirley Jackson's own novels, with a lot of The Yellow Wallpaper in there. Two women are trapped in a house together like We Have Always Lived in the Castle. There's a lot of focus on cramped, interior spaces, similar to The Haunting of Hill House, as well as a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship that develops between Shirley and Rose, Rose is nearly Driven to Suicide on one of the rare scenes outside, and Shirley is portrayed as very agoraphobic. Meanwhile, Shirley convinces Rose to investigate the real-life disappearance that inspired Hangsaman (which she is also shown writing), and there are repeated scenes of Shirley dreaming that she is a witch and imagining various other religious rituals.rituals, which were also a major influence on The Lottery and several of Jackson's short stories.
• Top Secret!, along with being a parody of spy movies like Airplane! was for disaster ones, opens with a pastiche to old beach comedies, along with a song pastiche of The Beach Boys.
• The Third Saturday In October Part V is a pastiche of horror films and franchises that were launched in imitation of Halloween.

Literature

• Steven Brust:
  • The Khaavren Romances are a humorous (but reverent) pastiche of Alexandre Dumas.
  • To Reign in Hell is a pastiche of Roger Zelazny, especially his early mythology-based works.
• Gilbert Adair:
  • The Act of Roger Murgatroid is a pastiche of Agatha Christie's style.
  • Alice Through the Needle's Eye is a sequel to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in a pastiche of Carroll's style.
  • Peter Pan and the Only Children is a sequel to J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan in a pastiche of Barrie's style.
• The novel Wake Up, Sir! takes place in a contemporary setting, but is written in the style of the Jeeves and Wooster series, the narrator being a man of questionable sanity obsessed with P. G. Wodehouse. He employs a smoothly competent valet named Jeeves, who may or may not actually exist.
• Sherlock Holmes pastiches are too plentiful to count and have been around almost as long as the stories themselves. Common plots include attempts to explain Noodle Incidents such as the Giant Rat of Sumatra, deconstructions, and crossovers.
  • Stephen King wrote "The Doctor’s Case", using some of Arthur Conan Doyle's favorite themes: Abusive Parents, Asshole Victim, Empathic Environment (as a Plot Point!) and Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!. It presents us a Locked Room Mystery where it is The Watson, not the Great Detective, who solves the case, but only partially, because Good Cannot Comprehend Evil (showing us the relationship between the Amateur Sleuth and the Inspector Lestrade from other perspective). At the end, the culprit is Let Off by the Detective by Destroy the Evidence. However, The Watson has a case of I'm Having Soul Pains after solving the case, noticing for the first time that his partner amazing skill is Power at a Price, and that the culprits plan failed due to excessive reliance on tools, signaling Victorian London society as We Have Become Complacent.
  • August Derleth created a pastiche by way of expy in his Solar Pons series.
• Philip José Farmer's short-story "The Jungle-Rot Kid on the Nod" was a simultaneous pastiche of two very different writers named Burroughs: Edgar Rice (creator of Tarzan) and William S. (Naked Lunch and Junky).
• Cloud Atlas is a novel written in six different genres, all of which are presented as loving genre pastiches. (In chronological order: Period Drama, Genteel Interbellum Setting Satire, Mystery Fiction, Kafka Komedy, Cyberpunk Dystopia, and Science Fantasy Adventure.) It's most notable in the sci-fi chapter, and the characters throughout the novel comment on the similarities between the stories and the works they evoke.
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe:
  • Writer Gareth Roberts loves doing this in his Expanded Universe books whenever possible:
    • His novelisation of the lost Douglas Adams story Shada is written as a pastiche of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a Mythology Gag.
    • "Countdown to TV Action", a short story from Short Trips and Sidesteps, is a Pastiche of the ridiculous, canon-inaccurate TV Comics Doctor Who strips. Complete with the character being named "Dr Who", being gratuitously sexist and mean, making staggering and implausible Bat Deductions "because he's a scientist", and the generally cosy and childish tone.
    • The story "Voice from the Vortex" in Doctor Who Magazine was a spoof of the writing in the William Hartnell-era annuals, with Captain Ersatz villains, atrocious illustrations, glaring inaccuracies and a nonsensical plot.
    • "The Plotters" is a spoof of a Dennis Spooner-era historical, and incorporates Leaning on the Fourth Wall elements like William Hartnell's signature line flubs and jokes about cheap sets.
  • The Telos novella Ghost Ship is a pastiche of M. R. James.
  • The first chapter in Campaign is written from the first person point of view of Ian Chesterton in a style imitating the 60s Target novelisation Dr. Who in an Exciting Adventure With the Daleks. There turns out to be a very good reason for this. There are also chunks of the book that pastiche 60s Doctor Who picture books, the TV Comic strips and the board game double-spread from The Dalek Book.
  • The chapter in Eye of Heaven written from the Fourth Doctor's POV is done in the style of his narration from Doctor Who And The Pescatons.
• Some of author (and literature professor) David Lodge's books contain stylistic pastiches of well-known literary figures. Probably the most significant title for pastiche is The British Museum is Falling Down, in which every chapter is written in a different author's style, including Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. His most important novel, Small World, was in part a pastiche of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
• Sebastian Faulks wrote the James Bond novel Devil May Care as a pastiche of Ian Fleming's works. He is even credited on the cover as "Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming".
• Stephen King's "Jerusalem's Lot", part of the story collection Night Shift, is an H. P. Lovecraft pastiche, containing familiar Lovecraft elements such as a huge Eldritch Abomination, a Tome of Eldritch Lore, and an educated, white New Englander protagonist (though as a point of deliberate contrast to Lovecraft's often less than wholesome views on race, this guy is a abolitionist) who discovers some terrible secrets regarding his family history.
• Solar Defenders: The Role of a Shield is a story in the style of Power Rangers, about what would realistically happen to ordinary teenagers who had to deal with the stress of being Sentai heroes.
• Agatha Christie's 1929 short story collection Partners in Crime is Christie giving Shout Outs to and/or satirizing other popular mystery writers of the day. "The Case of the Missing Lady" satirizes Sherlock Holmes (the last Sherlock Holmes stories were published in 1927), "The Affair of the Pink Pearl" satirizes Dr. Thorndyke, and, believe it or not, closing story "The Man Who Was No. 16" lampoons Christie's own Hercule Poirot. This is all done specifically by her protagonist Tommy Beresford, In-Universe. Tommy and his wife Tuppence have just been put in charge of a detective agency despite having no PI experience (It Makes Sense in Context). He tells her that, since the two of them don't know what they're doing, they might as well read detective fiction to see how it's done.

Live-Action TV

• Ugly Betty is a pastiche of Hispanic Soap Opera, as it is an adaptation of a very popular soap opera for the American audience.
• Stranger Things is a pastiche of various genres of 80s movies, including E.T., Carrie, Stand By Me, etc. For a while in the first season, the teens' storylines are a pastiche of John Hughes movies.
• Community regularly has an episode that is a pastiche of a particular genre. The most well-known are their paintball episodes: "Modern Warfare" is a pastiche of action movies, "A Fistful of Paintballs" does The Western and "For A Few Paintballs More" pastiches the Star Wars-esque "Ragtag Bunch of Misfits vs. The Empire" type of film. Also notable is "Contemporary American Poultry" (Mafia movies), "Epidemology" (Zombie Apocalypse) and "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" (Heroic Fantasy). Later seasons also examples such as "Basic Lupine Urology" (Law & Order), "Basic Intergluteal Numismatics" (serial killers), and "Geothermal Escapism" (post-apocalyptic movies).
• Life on Mars (2008) is noted for having a grittier, harder 70s look influenced directly by Get Carter and classic Film Noir in general.
• Doctor Who:
  • One of the most beloved periods of Doctor Who was the "gothic" era from Seasons 12 to 14, which was made up of pastiches of various pulp genres, usually classic sci-fi or Gothic Horror. "Planet of Evil" is like Forbidden Planet, "Pyramids of Mars" and "The Brain of Morbius" are pure Hammer Horror, "The Deadly Assassin" borrows from The Manchurian Candidate and JFK assassination conspiracy theories, "The Robots of Death" is a mixture of Agatha Christie and Isaac Asimov's Baley/Olivaw books, and "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" mixes up Sherlock Holmes and Yellow Peril Exploitation Films.
  • Eric Saward often enjoyed pastiching Who writers from the show's past in his stories, with particular attention paid to Robert Holmes (double-act side characters, Crapsack World cynicism) and Douglas Adams (loopy intellectual humour, witty dialogue), but Bloodier and Gorier than both of these. "Earthshock" is a Holmes takeoff, and the audio drama "Slipback" is mostly Adams.
  • Mark Gatiss's scripts for the show are often pastiches of older show formats — "The Crimson Horror" is a Robert Holmes Gothic Horror, "Robot of Sherwood" is very like a Dennis Spooner-era First Doctor historical (such as "The Myth Makers"), and "Empress of Mars" is extremely close to a Brian Hayles Ice Warrior story (and the UNIT era in general, using the Victorian soldiers as stand-ins for UNIT).
• Supernatural has a handful of pastiche episodes and title cards:
  • "Hell House" emulates found footage horror films, complete with camera abuse and partially effective censorship.
  • "Monster Movie" is a loving pastiche of old black-and-white horror films.
  • "Changing Channels" references Grey's Anatomy and CSI directly (at the time, they aired in the same timeslot as Supernatural). Other sections of the episode are pastiches of sitcoms, Japanese game shows, and public service announcements.
  • The title card for "Clap Your Hands If You Believe..." is an X-Files pastiche.
• Each In-Universe episode of WandaVision is styled after a classic sitcom, down to the Aspect Ratio that would've been used at the time. Inspirations include The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Family Ties, Malcolm in the Middle, and Modern Family.

Music

• About half of "Weird Al" Yankovic's songs are pastiches. Most of them are not, in fact, parodies of the songs they pastiche, as, though they often satirize various aspects of society or parody other works, they don't make any point about the original.
  • ... but not all. "Smells Like Nirvana", for instance, directly tweaks the reputation for unintelligibility of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", while "Six Words Long" implicitly jibes George Harrison's (and before him, James Ray) "Got My Mind Set On You" for its simplicity. And "Achy Breaky Song" ("Don't play that song, that achy-breaky song") is more or less transparent — at least, for those of us who remember how overplayed it was in The '90s.
  • "Don't Download This Song" is an example of Weird Al doing satire. Made even funnier due to the fact that it was offered as a free download on many sites. Including his own.
  • Many of his original songs imitate the style of certain artists, e.g. "Dare to Be Stupid" is a pastiche of Devo, and "Mr. Popeil" is a pastiche of Theb52s.
  • "Craigslist" is a pastiche of the Doors (Ray Manzarek appeared on the song as a guest musician). It's so well done that sometimes people mistake it for an actual Doors song. The song was done as an homage, not a parody.
  • Weird Al can go beyond artists for his pastiches. "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me", for instance, is a pastiche of songs composed by Jim Steinman.
• On the other hand, the songs on the Homestar Runner album Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits almost all parody the genres they pastiche. For instance, lyrics like "Darkness... the fate of the world!" in "Moving Very Slowly" parody the overblown epic tone of much death metal, while "Circles" is one big bash on the typical college blues band.
• The "SCV Love Song" is a pastiche of Boy Band music written about Starcraft II.
• Igor Stravinsky's neoclassical period consists mostly of pastiches of more traditional baroque and romantic composers.
• Erik Satie wrote a few works that are a pastiche of Richard Wagner and Camille St. Saëns, two composers he personally loathed.
  • Which ones?
• Nirvana's "About a Girl" is a pastiche of The Beatles. Kurt Cobain admits writing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as an attempt at "the ultimate pop song … basically trying to rip off The Pixies."
• Frank Zappa' s Cruising with Ruben & the Jets is both a pastiche of and a homage to 1950s doowop. Though most of his music spoofed the clichés and tropes of other musical styles, including rock and classical music.
• Ugly Kid Joe's "Neighbor" is a clear musical and lyrical pastiche of AC/DC.
• Queen have done this a number of times:
  • "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is a pastiche of Elvis Presley.
  • "Innuendo" is a pastiche of Led Zeppelin.
  • "Somebody to Love" is a pastiche of Aretha Franklin.
  • "Another One Bites The Dust" is a pastiche of Chic.
• Several songs on the Pokémon 2.B.A Master soundtrack album are pastiches of popular artists and genres.
  • The title track "2.B.A. Master" is a pastiche of Michael Jackson.
  • "Viridian City" is a pastiche of synthpop music.
  • "What Kind Of Pokémon Are You?" is a pastiche of '80s rap groups such as Run–D.M.C..
  • "My Best Friends" is a pastiche of the Tamla Motown group the Four Tops.
  • "Together Forever" is a pastiche of Britpop.
  • "Double Trouble" is a pastiche of The Bee Gees and other '70s disco artists.
• Thulcandra was formed as a side project by Steffen Kummerer and Jurgen Zintz as a way of paying homage to Dissection, Necrophobic, Sacramentum, Unanimated, and various other classic other melodic black metal acts that they loved.
• Radiohead's "Permanent Daylight" is considered to be a pastiche of Sonic Youth.
• The back cover of Frank Black's B-Side album Oddballs puts parenthetical notes about which artist a song was meant to sound like: Multiple songs are labeled as "trying to be Strummer" or "Trying to be Dylan", "Village Of The Sun is labeled "trying to be Springsteen AND Dylan", and "Man Of Steel" is apparently a self-pastiche, labeled "trying to be me".
• Stephen Sondheim often used pastiche in his musicals; most of the songs in Follies are homages to the styles of specific composers, while Assassins uses styles ranging from American folk songs to 1980s pop.

Pinballs

• The aliens in Firepower are highly reminiscent of Jack Kirby's style, though most believe it was simply due to Plagiarism instead of being any sort of tribute.

Professional Wrestling

• Rob Conway’s theme "Just Look at Me" is based upon the music of Randy Newman.
• Chavo Guerrero Jr.’s theme he used under the short lived Kerwin White gimmick was a Frank Sinatra-style crooner song.

Video Games

• City of Heroes is generally a loving pastiche of as many Super Hero tropes as it can fit in, sometimes straying into Affectionate Parody.
• Evil Genius is a lighthearted pastiche of 1960s Martini-style Spy Fiction, particularly James Bond, told from the perspective of a megalomaniacal supervillain scheming from their evil lair.
• I Wanna Be the Guy pastiches and parodies 8-bit games in general, and some 16-bit ones too.
• Dead Space was stated by its developers to be a love letter to the sci-fi and sci-fi horror genres, in particular 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris and Alien
• Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico is a pastiche of 90's action films, with particular influence from Mexican film and a particular affection for Robert Rodriguez.
• The "Let's Go To The Mall" dance in the 3rd Just Dance is full of 80s pastiche when it comes to the dancing.
• Magical Diary is a pastiche of tropes and elements from Harry Potter fanfiction, though it mixes in elements of Parody and Deconstruction as well.
• Each main game in Metal Gear pastiches Hollywood action movies:
  • Metal Gear is modelled after The Great Escape and contains a lot of 1940s elements that are discarded in later games.
  • Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is very mid-80s, with Comic-Book Fantasy Casting of 80s action luminaries like Mel Gibson, Tom Behrenger and Richard Krenna in the main roles of Snake, Fox and Campbell.
  • Metal Gear Solid resembles a late-80s-early-90s action movie with a 20 Minutes into the Future setting, an Evil Twin, a World of Ham, blue Mood Lighting, a gloomy Synthwave soundtrack, and Cyberpunk elements.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a late-90s-early-00s action movie with stylish green-tinted visuals and cerebral, philosophical themes, although it also heavily swipes from John Carpenter.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was a pastiche of Sean Connery-era James Bond movies, mashed up with a lot of Rambo and Commando imagery.
  • Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker derived influences from 1970s war movies, 70s anime, and a lot of Stanley Kubrick.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain looks like an 00s-10s thriller, with lots of Lens Flare, Shaky Cam and torture scenes.
• Friday Night Funkin': The developers have stated the game took inspiration from various things, mainly rhythm games, such as DanceDanceRevolution, Parappa The Rapper, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA and Gitaroo Man.

Web Animation

• BT21 UNIVERSE introduces Cooky and their backstory by making the entire (2-minute) episode in the style of an 80s-90s Shōnen anime opening, including an Aspect Ratio Switch into 4:3, an Art Shift into 2d animation with a VHS aesthetic, a Hotblooded rock theme song about The Power of Friendship, shots of Cooky and friends training against the sunrise and sitting looking at the sunset, a dramatic story about Cooky's Evil Former Friend with a Superpowered Evil Side, Ian, and a "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending.

Webcomics

• In The Dragon Doctors, the Shows Within A Show in Chapter 6, when Goro and Sarin are looking for something to watch on TV, include analogues of Star Trek, Grey's Anatomy, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Robot Wars.
• The entire premise of Koan of the Day is a pastiche of the Buddhist koan.
• Working Doodles
• Future Reunion has a style extremely similar to Naoko Takeuchi, which makes the comic more enjoyable to read.

Web Original

• Decoder Ring Theatre:
  • The Red Panda Adventures is a pastiche of superheroes from The Great Depression and The '40s, like The Spirit and The Green Hornet. It centers on the masked mystery man, the Red Panda, who hides his identity as one of Toronto's wealthiest men while he defends his city from criminals in the midst of the Depression and World War II. Only his trusty driver and sidekick, Kit Baxter the Flying Squirrel, knows his true identity.
  • Black Jack Justice is a pastiche of Hardboiled Detective noir. Jack Justice and Trixie Dixon, Girl Detective, work for $35 a day, plus expenses, for anyone who walks through the palacial doors of Justice and Dixon. Private Eye Monologues abound as Jack and Trixie alternate between telling the story to the listeners and presenting the scenes as they happened.
• EMZ GEMZ, a Hampshire, England-based fashion store, pastiches professionally-shot model photos with its store owner modelling the clothes and the photos looking like professional modelling shots, although this borders on Stylistic Suck at times.
• Medlife Crisis's A Seaman Ingested 35 Knives. This Is What Transpired In His Gut. is a double pastiche, firstly presented and titled like Chubbyemu's medical videos, while also being a black and white video with fashion and speech making a bit of fun at old timey educational videos.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons have often made pastiches of other animation styles:
  • "Steamboat Itchy" and "Manhattan Madness" were two Itchy and Scratchy cartoons stylistically similar to 1910s and 1920 cartoons of that era. The former specifically calls back to "Steamboat Willie", a very early Mickey Mouse short.
  • Another Itchy and Scratchy cartoon featuring the cat and mouse fighting Hitler is a stylistic homage to the World War II propaganda cartoons.
  • In "Krusty Gets Kancelled", Krusty is forced to briefly replace it with Worker and Parasite, "Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team" — a surreal style parody of Soviet animation.
  • The end of "Jaws Wired Shut" where Homer saves Marge from a demolition derby is a pastiche of the 1930s Popeye cartoons by the Fleischer Studios.
• Adventure Time is a pastiche (and deconstruction) of several tropes from Dungeons and Dragons and other RPG style tabletop and video games.
• South Park also enjoys making pastiches:
  • "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery" is stylistically a parody of the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! cartoons.
  • "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants" features a segment where Cartman fights off Bin Laden in the style of the World War II Looney Tunes cartoons, complete with similar sounding music and gags.
  • "Good Times With Weapons" features pastiches of Anime.
  • "Major Boobage" features a stylistic homage to the 1981 cult classic Heavy Metal.
  • "A Scause for Applause" is a homage to Dr. Seuss.
• Family Guy:
  • In "Road To The Multiverse" Brian and Stewie visit a Disneyesque world, complete with all of the company's stylistic trademarks.
• Batman: The Animated Series episode "Joker's Favor", written by Paul Dini is an Homage to Alfred Hitchcock works, with Charlie Collins, an Everyman character that could be a Shout-Out to a young Alfred Hitchcock confronting The Joker and Batman. It shares a lot of the tropes that were part of the Alfred Hitchcock signature style: Action Survivor, Black Comedy, Creator Cameo, Dramatic Irony, Fade to Black, Hope Spot, MacGuffin/MacGuffin Title, The Oner, The Peeping Tom and Police Are Useless.
• The visual art-style of Star Wars Rebels has been repeatedly described as "Ralph McQuarrie's concept-paintings brought to life in CG", as a deliberate homage to the work the late artist had in creating the atmospheric look of the Star Wars movies.

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