History Main / RedundantParody

Parodies are hard to write if you're unfamiliar with the original work. Sometimes, you'll [[OutsideJoke make points that the work itself refutes]]. Sometimes, you'll [[SpoofTheIronicFilmSeriously treat tongue-in-cheek works like they're serious]]. But some spoofs make an even more serious error. They try to mock the original work with their own humorous spin but reproduce the original instead of parodying it.

Parodies are hard to write if you're unfamiliar with the original work. Sometimes, you'll [[OutsideJoke make points that the work itself refutes]]. Sometimes, you'll treat tongue-in-cheek works like they're serious. But some spoofs make an even more serious error. They try to mock the original work with their own humorous spin but reproduce the original instead of parodying it.

** Of course, the Critic can be forgiven for the former example, considering that his skit was much better(and included many clever improvised bits, considering he filmed it at a con, bringing in several of the attendees along the way) than what the movie threw in.

* College Humor made a fake trailer for a version of ''Film/TheDarkKnight'' done in the style of the 1960s ''Series/{{Batman}}'' TV show. Much of the humor seems to rely on the apparent fact that a movie about this incarnation of Batman would turn out way too silly. Someone must not have gotten word that this TV show ''does'' have [[BatmanTheMovie a very silly movie]].

* Early in Marvel Comics' parody ''What Th--?!'' series, writer-artist John Byrne penned a story in which {{Superman}} and the FantasticFour meet. After the Thing shows up, Byrne adds a footnote saying, "I'm sorry, it's impossible to write parody Thing dialogue that doesn't sound like the real thing."

* An online video called ''The Hungry Games'', mocking the trailer for ''TheHungerGames'' in making it about an eating contest, calls the main character "Catnip" as a ParodyName. The creator evidently didn't realize that in-universe, that's Gale's personal nickname for Katniss.

** Surprisingly, this is pretty much the only thing the terrible ''GrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'' parodies got right. In the second episode, their Harry Potter stand-in has become a teen... but the joke is that Billy and Mandy (who are standard WesternAnimation children who never grow up except as a PlotRelevantAgeUp for a FlashForward) are bewildered by the concept of aging.

* ''LadyGaga''' is often said to be parodying the pop-music genre by making her performances and appearance increasingly over-the-top and controversial to the point of being ridiculous. In other words, she's parodying pop stars by [[Music/BritneySpears doing the same thing]] [[{{Madonna}} they've all been doing]] [[MichaelJackson for decades.]]

* College Humor made a fake trailer for a version of ''[[Film/TheDarkKnightSaga The Dark Knight]]'' done in the style of the 1960s ''Series/{{Batman}}'' TV show. Much of the humor seems to rely on the apparent fact that a movie about this incarnation of Batman would turn out way too silly. Someone must not have gotten word that this TV show ''does'' have [[BatmanTheMovie a very silly movie]].

* We've all heard the IncrediblyLamePun about playing [[TheStrangeCaseOfDoctorJekyllAndMrHyde "Mr. Hyde and Mr. Seek" or "Mr. Hyde-And-Seek"]], right? That joke, in fact, was made in the original book.

* One of the very last BobHope specials on NBC tried to lampoon [[Film/{{Batman}} the 1989]] ''[[Film/{{Batman}} Batman]]'' [[Film/{{Batman}} movie]], and had Hope done up as Jack Nicholson's Joker. Both Batman and Superman were in the skit, and Hope refers to them by derisive names like "Bat-Brain" and "Super-Stupe", and getting laughs from his equally aging studio audience. Hope and his writers must have thought that villains do not talk like that to heroes, but especially since Denny O'Neil, this is almost exactly the way the Joker talks down to opponents.

* [[http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif This]] ''BobTheAngryFlower'' parody sequel to ''AtlasShrugged'' has been widely circulated where people admit, sometimes quite proudly, that they found AynRand's book too long to read. If they had actually read it through, they might have discovered that industrialists such as Dwight Sanders ''do'' take up farming after leaving the world behind for [[MarySuetopia Galt's Gulch]].

* ''RobotChicken'' and ''The TV Land Awards'' have both featured skits that combine ''{{Sex and the City}}'' with ''TheGoldenGirls'', or at least were aimed in that direction. Problem is, 70% of the humor in ''The Golden Girls'' derives from these aging women unashamedly talking about their sex lives.

* The array of [[MarvelComics Marvel]]-esque superheroes in the supporting cast of ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'' includes, among others, [[CaptainAmerica Major Glory]], [[TheMightyThor Valhallan]], [[Comicbook/IncredibleHulk The Infraggable Krunk]], [[Comicbook/IronMan Living Bullet]], [[ScarletWitch Miss Spell]], and...White Tiger. That last hero has the same name as a ''real'' Marvel character.

* ''The Chronicle'' was a SciFiChannel TV show that attempted to parody the tabloids, by stating that everything in them was true. The first episode parodied (or ripped off) the plot of the first ''Film/MenInBlack'' film. Thing is, ''Men In Black'' was already a parody/comedy, so there was very little that could be made fun of -- and it had already used the joke of the tabloids being true.

* The array of [[MarvelComics Marvel]]-esque superheroes in the supporting cast of ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'' includes among others, Major Glory, Valhallan, The Infraggable Krunk, Living Bullet, Miss Spell, and...White Tiger. That last hero has the same name as a ''real'' Marvel character.

* The array of [[MarvelComics Marvel]]-esque superheroes in the supporting cast of ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'' includes among others, Major Glory, Valhallan, The Infraggable Krunk, Living Bullet, Miss Spell, and...White Tiger. The last seems like either a counterpart of Black Panther, or a poorly-named equivalent of ''Marvel'''s White Tiger.

* College Humor made a fake trailer for a version of ''[[Film/TheDarkKnightSaga The Dark Knight]]'' done in the style of the 1960s ''Series/{{Batman}}'' TV show. Much of the humor seems to rely on the apparent fact that a movie about this incarnation of Batman would turn out way too silly. Someone must not have gotten word that this TV show ''does'' have a very silly movie.

* In the Nostalgia Critic's review of Casper, he ends by making a lengthy ''Ghostbusters'' joke, despite the fact that such a joke was already made in the movie and ''he showed it''. In his Top 11 Drug PSA's, he makes a joke about a Star Wars smoking one about robots not having lungs to damage...which C-3PO himself comments in the PSA.

* ''AvatarTheAbridgedSeries'' suffers from this some of the time, due to parodying a show that already has a high joke quotient. For example, its parody of the episode "The Storm" has a scene where Katara says: "Aang would never run away! [Aang gets on his glider and flies off] Aang, stop running away!" The original was exactly the same, only with different wording.
* Before he became TheIrateGamer, Chris Bores made a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGZR9AnypvI "parody"]] of MythBusters. Though it's not as much a parody as it is a bland imitation.

Some comedy writers avoid this trap by [[KnowWhenToFoldEm limiting their targets]]. ''Rifftrax'' refuses to mock comedies, fearing their commentary will sound too much like the original.

Parodies are hard to write if you're unfamiliar with the original work. Sometimes, you'll [[OutsideJoke make points that the work itself refutes]]. Sometimes, you'll [[SpoofedTheIronicFilmSeriously treat tongue-in-cheek works like they're serious]]. But some spoofs make an even more serious error. They try to mock the original work with their own humorous spin but reproduce the original instead of parodying it.