Parody Assistance

Nicolas Cage is beside himself tonight.

"When is Weird Al gonna do 'Like a Surgeon'?"

— Madonna^note Yankovic would do it on Dare to Be Stupid, in 1985.

A great honor for anyone working on a parody is when the creator or anyone else involved with the original goes beyond granting the parodist permission (and even enjoying said work) and instead actually helps them out with their parody. This can be as simple as lending sets or as drastic as directly working with the parodist, such as singing in a duet.

Related to Adam Westing, an actor's Self-Parody of either his most famous role, his Old Shame, or his Typecasting. Also related to Approval of God, when a work's author approves the fandom's parodies (although that applies to Fan Works as well), and to Actually Pretty Funny, when a parody's target thinks the parody itself to be just that. See also Meme Acknowledgment and Official Parody.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Walter Williams, creator of Mr. Bill and the producer of his sketches on Saturday Night Live, produced the Pizza Head Show commercials for Pizza Hut in the 1990s, which were a parody of the Mr. Bill sketches.
• Kristian Nairn parodied his role as Hodor on Game of Thrones on a commercial for the KFC Ricebox.
• Willie Rushton, who in the 1980s was seen as very much "the voice of A. A. Milne" following his popular appearances on Jackanory, narrated an ad for Golden Churn margarine which spoofed "The King's Breakfast" from When We Were Very Young.
• Rachael Leigh Cook, in addition to spoofing her famous "This is Your Brain on Drugs" PSA for Robot Chicken (as noted below under Western Animation), did a more serious subversion of it in the form of "This is Your Brain on Drug Policy" for the Drug Policy Alliance, which describes America's harsh anti-drug laws as having fueled mass incarceration and destroyed millions of people's lives with no real benefit.
• In 1992, a series of advertisements parodied Inspector Morse, with Mel Smith taking John Thaw's role as the Inspector. In the last advertisement, he tracked down and arrested the perp... who was played by John Thaw.

Anime & Manga

• In Code Geass, Emperor Charles makes a big speech early in the show about the inequality of mankind. Some joker of a Japanese fan took the manga version of the speech and edited it so that it was instead a speech extolling how awesome breasts are. Norio Wakamoto, Charles's voice actor, found out about it and made an official recording of it in the Emperor's voice.
• Some fans wrote a parody of the Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan theme song, revolving around Sebastian Michaelis. Then Daisuke Ono found out about it, and recorded it.
• Dragon Ball Z's Buu Saga has an infamous scene where the characters see a "re-enactment" of the Cell Games, a painfully cheesy film that paints Mr. Satan as the hero who saved the world. When Funimation got to this episode in Dragon Ball Z Kai The Final Chapters, they hired Team Four Star to dub the sequence, which was packed full of references not just to Dragon Ball Z Abridged but also to a number of infamous DBZ memes. The scene only aired on Toonami once due to Toei (who aren't too fond of TFS, or parodies and fanworks in general) ordering Funimation to get rid of it, but it can still be found on YouTube.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! inspired the popular Spanish meme known as "Trampas locas" (Mad Cheats), where Yugi cheats against any character he can encounter. One meme showed him fighting against Freeza. Irwin Daayán and Gerardo Reyero, Yugi's and Freeza's official voices in Latin America, respectively, released a dub of that exact parody for people to edit it.
• Some members of AKB48 performed a Yo-kai Watch ending theme as parody group Nya-KB.
• KEI Garou, the official illustrator of Hatsune Miku and her box art, drew a parody of his original Miku box art for one of the blu ray covers◊ to GDGD Fairies.

Comedy

• Stan Freberg received permission to use the Dragnet theme and orchestra for the parody St. George and the Dragonet, as Jack Webb was a fan of Freberg's comedy records. Several takes had to be redone because the orchestra members were laughing too hard to play their instruments properly.

Comic Books

• The issue of the Animaniacs comic that parodied The X-Files had the artists of the Topps Comics title of said show contributing the cover and the pencils of the wraparound story.
• Big Bang Comics sometimes got assistance from the creators of the works they were pastiching, such as Curt Swan drawing a cover featuring two incarnations of Ultiman, or Dave Cockrum drawing the cover for the Legion of Super-Heroes pastiche the Pantheon of Heroes.
• "Tomb of Goofula" in Goofy Adventures #16 (1991) was written by Marv Wolfman, drawn by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer, coloured by Michele Wolfman and lettered by John Costanza. That's the entire creative team of classic The Tomb of Dracula.
• The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror: One issue tells the story of Homer becoming a terrible blob creature made out of Squishee drink, in a very obvious Swamp Thing homage ("Squish Thing"). So who did they get to write and draw said story? Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, the duo who created Swamp Thing to begin with!

Comic Strips

• Garfield creator Jim Davis has contributed a few strips to Garfield Minus Garfield.
• When Bloom County finally confirmed that Garfield was Bill the Cat's father in the 2015 relaunch, Jim Davis drew the first three panels of the appropriate strip (where Garfield refuses to take Bill's call).
• In the annual Bloom County / Calvin and Hobbes crossover strips neither creator will confirm just who drew what.
• One Garfield strip had Garfield joining the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with the turtles being drawn by co-creator Peter Laird.

Films — Live-Action

• George Lucas has done this a few times.
  • He has allowed original music from Star Wars to be used in parodies (such as Spaced) and has actually appeared in parodies, as in Robot Chicken.
  • Industrial Light & Magic contributed effects to Mel Brooks' Spaceballs and the "Jews in Space" segment of History of the World Part I.
  • After the release of the first movie, Lucasfilm's lawyers wrote a cease and desist letter to MAD over their parody. George sent a letter of his own saying to ignore his own company and keep on making the parodies, as he was a MAD fan.
  • The Star Wars site has supplied sound effects and quotes to fans to use in their homages and parodies.
• When Mel Brooks made Young Frankenstein, he was able to film in the original studios, on the original sets, and using the original props of the classic movies he was spoofing.
• In Beverly Hills Cop III, the Wonder World theme park's song, which spoofs the Disney Land song "It's a Small World After All", was written by "It's a Small World"'s original composers Richard and Robert Sherman.
• Similarly, in Iron Man 2, Richard Sherman co-wrote the Stark Expo theme song "Make Way for Tomorrow Today", a spoof of the theme to Disney's Carousel of Progress attraction which was originally seen at the 1964 World's Fair.
• A rather interesting reverse-assistance took place for Scary Movie 4. The Saw parody set was so well made that the filmmakers from the Saw films asked to use it after filming was complete! The movie also played this straight by actually having Bill Pullman appear as a parody of his Peter Kirk character from The Grudge, one of this movie's main targets.
• When Hot Shots! Part Deux moved from parodying Top Gun to Rambo instead, they managed to get Richard Crenna to essentially reprise his iconic role as Colonel Trautman.
• George Harrison makes a cameo in The Rutles' mockumentary film All You Need Is Cash - as a news reporter who interviews the Rutles' press agent while their boutique store is being looted.
• MTV, creators of the reality show My Super Sweet Sixteen, went on to make My Super Psycho Sweet 16, a Horror Comedy parody of the series in which an Alpha Bitch stages a decadent birthday party straight out of that show, only for it to get interrupted by a Serial Killer and turn into a Slasher Movie.
• Italian ensemble comedy film Grandi Magazzini features among the various sketches one where comedian Paolo Villaggio plays the part of an advanced android. The sketch parodied the character of Mr. Zed the robot which was quite popular in Italy at the time. David Kirk Traylor, Mr. Zed's performer, was Villaggio's consultant and choreographer for the sketch.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers had Moving Picture Company recreating some of their old effects in a mocking way, like Baloo, the Bat-Armor, the cats from Cats, and most notably, the "Ugly Sonic" that was tossed out of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), which the director noted as MPC having to "repeat their mistakes on purpose this time." In addition, the brief scene with the My Little Pony cast was done by Top Draw, who worked heavily on that incarnation of the show.
• This trope was actually subverted in the film adaptation of Bye Bye Birdie, where Elvis Presley expressed interest in playing Conrad Birdie, a pretty transparent caricature of Elvis, but was vetoed by his manager Colonel Tom Parker, who didn't want Elvis to be playing a role that parodied him. The part of Conrad would eventually go to Jesse Pearson instead.

Live-Action TV

• Larisa Oleynik played the title character of All That's parody of The Secret World of Alex Mack.
• When The Drew Carey Show was going to do an episode making fun of sci-fi conventions and the fans who go to them in costume, they wanted to have a couple of characters dress up as aliens from Babylon 5. The creators of B5 agreed, and sent their own makeup people to do the alien makeup effects. (It helped that both series were produced by Warner Bros..)
• Chris Ballew, lead singer of The Presidents of the United States of America, showed up on Bill Nye the Science Guy to sing "Farm Food", which spoofed the POTUS song "Peaches".
• Anneka Rice of Challenge Anneka made a cameo appearance in the KYTV spoof Challenge Anna.
• In general, whenever somebody hosts Saturday Night Live, they'll participate in sketches that riff on their roles or works.
  • In addition to the "Conspiracy Theory Rock" example in the Western Animation folder, there have been sketches where the hosts (usually movie or TV stars) reprise their famous characters for a parody sketch. Examples include:
  • Jon Hamm as Don Draper for both a Mad Men parody called "Two A-Holes at an Ad Agency in the 1960s" ^note That sketch even had Elizabeth Moss and John Slattery from the actual series and a short film called "Don Draper's Guide to Picking Up Women."
  • Daniel Radcliffe as a washed-up Harry Potter who's still living in Hogwarts years after graduating.
  • David Duchovny as Agent Mulder in an X-Files parody cold open about a beast man attacking cast members.
  • Zac Efron in a High School Musical parody where he comes back during graduation and tells the graduating class that the real world is not like High School Musical.
  • John Malkovich as Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont in a Dangerous Liaisons stage show parody that takes place in a hot tub.
  • John Malkovich again in an Of Mice and Men parody that had two guys who acted like Lennie instead of the Lennie and George pairing.
  • Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro were also good sports when they appeared on "The Joe Pesci Show" on SNL and met their counterparts (Jim Breuer and Colin Quinn).
  • Sarah Michelle Gellar played Buffy in a sketch where, rather than living in Sunnydale, she lives in New York and has Seinfeldian plots.
  • A parody mashup of The Love Boat and Star Trek: The Next Generation had Patrick Stewart and Bernie Kopell playing their respective characters - Stewart as Capt. Picard and Kopell (the Doctor from The Love Boat) parodying DeForest Kelley's cameo as an elderly Dr. McCoy in the TNG pilot episode "Encounter At Farpoint".
  • David Hasselhoff shows up on the set of Weekend Update seemingly obtuse about which country in Europe that Norm Macdonald wanted him to mention as visiting during his trip. Eventually Norm gets flustered and just writes down what he wants the Hoff to state.
    David: Germans love me.
    Norm: Which once again proves my theory, Germans Love David Hasselhoff!
  • Martin Freeman as a character that was simultaneously Tim and Bilbo in a sketch set in an office in Middle Earth, with a boss who dresses like Gandalf but talks like David Brent.
  • A Twin Peaks parody featured Kyle MacLachlan as a version of Dale Cooper who's having so much fun playing detective that he doesn't want to find out who killed Laura Palmer — so he ignores Leo Johnson's repeated confessions.
  • Adam Driver portrayed his character Kylo Ren in a The Force Awakens-meets-Undercover Boss parody. Twice.
  • Scarlett Johansson played Black Widow in a trailer for a Black Widow movie... as a romantic comedy.
  • Similarly, Jeremy Renner reprised his role as Hawkeye for a sketch about how useless a man with a bow and arrow is during an full-scale alien invasion.
    Captain America: [You only brought] eleven arrows!? There are a hundred thousand aliens out there!
    Hawkeye: And I killed eleven of them. You're welcome.
  • Celebrity Jeopardy! normally has people doing impressions. However, for one of them, Tom Hanks appeared As Himself, being every bit as idiotic as the usual guest.
  • A December 2020 segment parodied Eminem's "Stan" with Pete Davidson as a man named Stu sending increasingly erratic letters to Santa Claus (played by host Jason Bateman) asking for a PlayStation 5. At the end of the segment, we see who got the PS5 meant for Stu: Eminem (As Himself).
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger memorably showed up in a "Hans and Franz" sketch, disparaging the duo as "girly men".
  • Bill Paxton played Brock Lovett in a sketch that parodied Titanic (1997), where Lovett and his team beat up the elderly Rose because they were so bored with her story, which also had Titanic director James Cameron appearing in it, saying that this was an alternate ending that he scrapped.
  • When Ray Romano hosted SNL, Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts, who played his parents on Everybody Loves Raymond, appeared during the opening monologue, channeling their roles from that show as Peter talked about his own experience hosting SNL in the 1970s and Doris talked about the movie My Giant.
  • One "Judge Judy" sketch ended with the real Judge Judy walking into the courtroom, telling Cheri Oteri "Get your bony ass out of my chair" then proceeding to give the same ridiculous ruling one would expect from Oteri's Judge Judy.
  • The recurring "What's up with that" sketch always ends with Lindsey Buckingham (played by Bill Hader) not being given a chance to talk. Eventually the real Lindsey Buckingham appeared alongside Hader's.
    Diondre Cole: All this time, I had no idea there were two Lindsey Buckinghams. How did this happen?
    Real Lindsey Buckingham: You should've let him talk, he would've told you.
  • The page image is of Nicolas Cage appearing along Andy Samberg in the "Weekend Update" segment "Get In The Cage", with Andy playing the "actual" Nic Cage and the actual Nic playing a clone of Nic Cage.
  • A parody of The Last of Us (2023) applying the tropes of both the show and the game it is based on to Mario Kart included Pedro Pascal (the actor of Joel in the actual series) as Mario.
  • When Val Kilmer hosted SNL, he poked fun at his portrayal of The Doors frontman Jim Morrison in a Behind the Music parody where Morrison puts together a supergroup comprised of other deceased music stars in Heaven.
  • The December 10, 2022 show co-hosted by Steve Martin and Martin Short had them reprising their roles of George Banks and Franck in a sketch for a trailer for Father Of The Bride Part 8.
• Parodies of Jeopardy! and/or Alex Trebek were often accompanied by Alex himself. The Saturday Night Live one, for instance, has the real Alex meeting the Will Ferrell Alex — and they both get mocked by Sean Connery.
  Connery: Well, well, well, two Trebeks. I feel like I'm in a Raisin Bran commercial — two scoops of fruit!
  Real Trebek: Back off, Connery. I don't have to take that from you.
  Connery: I guess it's true what they say — old married couples do start to look alike.
• Harry Hill was given very generous assistance in his gentle digs at long-running soap operas by the shows themselves; the stars and sets were made available for his use in Harry Hill's TV Burp.
• Jimmy Fallon's parody of Breaking Bad on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, "Joking Bad", features cameos from Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and Bob Odenkirk, the last actually playing the same character he does on the show.
  • It happens again when Jimmy does a parody of Riverdale (a dark adult take on Peanuts), which features a cameo appearance from the actual cast of Riverdale.
• In the 1989 series of UK game show The Krypton Factor, the Observation round, in which contestants' perceptive skills were tested by showing them a comedy sketch with six intentional continuity errors for them to spot, featured in the first episode a spoof of Treasure Hunt UK in which "treasure hunter" Anneka Rice and her studio-bound assistant (and former newsreader) Kenneth Kendall appeared as themselves.
• An interesting inversion — three years after Shelly Winters appeared in an episode of Batman (1966) spoofing 1930s gangster Ma Barker (and the infamous Barker family shootout), Roger Corman cast Winters in the film Bloody Mama as Ma Barker.
• The Big Bang Theory has an episode where the characters celebrate May 4th, Star Wars Day, and Sheldon has a dream sequence where a recently deceased character plays Obi-Wan as his Spirit Advisor. Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic gave support and helped them with building a Dagobah set as well as lightsaber effects.
• The British Saturday Morning Kids’ Show TISWAS had a regular skit with Lenny Henry as "Trevor McDoughnut", a parody of famous ITV newsreader and noted Stoic Trevor McDonald who would act as The Comically Serious while getting Covered in Gunge. The actual Trevor McDonald apparently thought this was Actually Pretty Funny and made at least one cameo appearance on the program... and then he got Covered in Gunge, as per TISWAS tradition, as well.
• The Hollywood Squares has had a few parodies made aimed at them over the years, and given the show's comedic bent, it's natural the crew would want to parody themselves. Perhaps the most notable of these would be a series of skits from the final season of In Living Color! called the East Hollywood Squares with all-black celebrities; in this case, the skits were hosted by the original Master of the Squares himself, Peter Marshall.
• How I Met Your Mother has the tie-in video of "Best Night Ever" which parodies "More Than Words" by Extreme and features Nuno Bettencourt.
• A French and Saunders sketch parodying Doctor Who (featuring two extras playing alien guards having a Seinfeldian Conversation while the set is redressed) was actually shot on the set of "Trial of a Time Lord", the Doctor Who serial being made at the time.
• When The Jack Benny Program parodied The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling played a dual role. First, Serling appears As Himself while Benny complains how far-fetched TZ is. Then, Benny winds up in the actual Twilight Zone, an Alternate Universe where no one knows who he and is Serling plays the mayor, who lives in Benny's house and has named the realm after himself ("You can call me 'Twi'").
• Roseanne:
  • The episode "Sherwood Schwartz: A Loving Tribute" featured a parody sequence with the cast playing the characters of Gilligan's Island. In The Tag, the surviving cast members of Gilligan's Island returned the favor.
  • Lecy Goranson played the role of Becky for the first five seasons. Sarah Chalke took over the role for the 6th and 7th seasons. Lecy Goranson returned to the role in the 8th season, and Sarah Chalke took over again in the 9th season. When this was lampshaded at the end of the episode in which Goranson returned with the song "Identical Beckys", William Schallert appeared toward the end standing next to John Goodman.
• The wild popularity of parodies of LazyTown's "We Are Number One" song led to the production releasing versions of the song with all audio channels separated, to facilitate further parodies.
• The first season of The Late Show (1992) had a recurring Gag Dub sketch called The Olden Days, based on Rush (1974). In the season finale, the stars of Rush, Brendon Lunney and John Waters (1948), appeared in the studio for a brief scene where they dubbed over Tony Martin and Mick Molloy. Similarly, the second season had a Gag Dub sketch called Bargearse, based on the cop show Bluey (1976), whose star Lucky Grills appeared in the studio audience at one point to call them out on taking the piss out of him every week.
• Dead Ringers had some fake CBeebies segments as sketches. The animatronic heads for these were supplied by Neal Scanlan, who did the same for actual CBeebies shows such as Tweenies.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): "A Day in Beaumont" extensively parodies 1950s science fiction films. Four of the guest stars, Warren Stevens, Kenneth Tobey, Jeff Morrow and John Agar, were well known for their roles in such films.
• Jerry Springer frequently parodied his own show. For example, he participated in a MADtv (1995) parody of his show, intentionally trying to get people to fight but being repeatedly frustrated. Eventually, he takes one of the audience members hostage to force them to start throwing punches.
• Get Smart did two parodies of other Spy Fiction series that featured unbilled cameos by the actual stars of those shows.
  • "Die, Spy" (based on I Spy) had a walk-on by Robert Culp as a Turkish waiter.
  • In "Pheasant Under Glass" (based on Mission: Impossible), Maxwell Smart's identity as a spy is exposed, so a doctor uses "instant spray-on plastic surgery" to disguise him as Martin Landau. When the Chief points out that Landau is better-known than Max, Max (played by Landau, but dubbed over with Don Adams' voice) replies, "Never heard of him."
• La Télé des Inconnus: In 1992, French comedic trio Les Inconnus made a parody sketch of the long-running gameshow Fort Boyard titled Fort Boyaux ("Fort Bowels"). Which was filmed... entirely at Fort Boyard, with the help of the usual team responsible for the show, including then-current show host Sophie Davant As Herself. Recreating such an iconic set elsewhere would have been very hard (and costly).
• Jaye Griffiths, who played Ros in Bugs, appeared in The Imaginatively Titled Punt and Dennis Show parody Plugs.
• TV Funhouse: In a segment of "The X-Presidents", SpongeBob SquarePants is hired to promote propaganda endorsing The War on Terror, until he ends up backing out due to how crude and xenophobic the script is. SpongeBob in the sketch is voiced by his actual voice actor from the original show, Tom Kenny.
  SpongeBob: And what about this part? You want me to sponge up all of the urine in America, and then... squeeze myself over Saddam Hussein's mouth?
• For the Doctor Who Series 4 wrap party, the cast and crew recorded a video of them all miming to "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by The Proclaimers. The choruses were all David Tennant flanked by two companions or other main characters, captioned in the style "Billie, David & Camille - Actors" ... except one clip which was "Craig, David & Charlie - The Proclaimers & their Biggest Fan".
• One of the bonus features on the DVD box set for the final season of Breaking Bad was a joke "alternate ending" where it's revealed that the entire show was All Just a Dream that Hal from Malcolm in the Middle (Bryan Cranston's second-most-famous character) had one night, complete with Jane Kaczmarek reprising her role as Lois as she tells a panicked Hal to go back to sleep.

Magazines

• MAD has done this a few times:
  • In the 70s, Jack Davis was drawing official Sesame Street art and working for MAD, so naturally he did MAD's Reality Street and Mafia Street spoofs.
  • Chris Houghton, who has drawn for the Adventure Time comics, also drew the cover for issue 520, which included two riffs on Adventure Time.
  • Dick DeBartolo, a fixture of the magazine, had to go uncredited for a Family Feud parody he wrote. Why? Because he was working for Goodson-Todman at the time, and had been since the 1960s, including the original run of Match Game and the 1970s revival.

Music

• Happens with "Weird Al" Yankovic a lot.
  • His music video for "Fat", a parody of Michael Jackson's "Bad", uses the subway set for a parody from Moonwalker called "Badder" (basically the same video, but with kids playing all the parts), which Jackson granted Al permission to borrow.
  • Similarly, the "Smells Like Nirvana" video was filmed on the same soundstage as the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video, with the janitor, cheerleaders, and some of the extras from the original making appearances in Al's version. Al's team also consulted the original producers of the "Teen Spirit" video (including director Samuel Bayer, who was reluctant about the situation).
  • "I Lost on Jeopardy!" ("Jeopardy" by the Greg Kihn Band) has Art Fleming and Don Pardo (the host and announcer from the original 1960s version) reprise their respective roles in the video for it, and even Greg Kihn himself appears in the end, as the man who drives the car.
  • Madonna asked a friend in conversation why "Weird Al" hadn't come out with a parody of "Like a Virgin" called "Like a Surgeon" yet. The friend was a mutual friend of Al's manager, who passed the idea onto Al. It's the only artist parody Al has ever done where the parody idea came from the original artist.
  • Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits agreed to allow Al to parody "Money for Nothing" on condition that Knopfler himself play his guitar parts from the original song in the parody and Dire Straits keyboardist Guy Fletcher played synthesizer.
  • He has similar success with his unfocused pastiches, in which the song evokes the artist's style without having the same tune. Examples include Ben Folds playing piano on "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?", Dweezil Zappa playing guitar for the Frank Zappa-esque "Genius in France", The Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek contributing to "Craigslist", and Taylor Hanson playing piano on "If That Isn't Love". (and while Tress MacNeille contributed to "Ricky", Toni Basil stated she'd gladly do the Lucy there).
  • James Brown arranged for Al to use the same stage set and backup performers from when he performed "Living in America" in Rocky IV for the parody version "Living with a Hernia".
  • Similar to Mark Knopfler listed above, Imagine Dragons helped Al compose "Inactive", a parody of their own "Radioactive", by making sure the opening of the song recreated the original as close as possible.
  • In the music video for the song "UHF", one segment parodies the video for Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love", in which a group of emotionless women mime playing the song (the main difference between the Palmer version and the "UHF" version is that the women are wearing glasses and fake moustaches). Robert Palmer arranged for the exact same women that appeared in "Addicted to Love" to be in the "UHF" video.
• George Harrison appeared in The Rutles, playing a reporter (he also gave ideas for the film and gave the filmmakers access to a then-unreleased Beatles documentary).
• Country Music parodist Cledus T. Judd often involves the original artist in videos of his parodies.
  • "She's Got a Butt Bigger Than the Beatles" ("Bigger Than the Beatles" by Joe Diffie): Diffie opens the video by saying, "Folks, I just want you to know that I had absolutely nothing to do with the making of this video."
  • "Every Light in the House Is Blown" ("Every Light in the House" by Trace Adkins): In the video, Trace hits Cledus with a fire extinguisher and shouts, "That's what you get for making fun of the way I dance!" He also sings about half the verses.
  • "Did I Shave My Back for This?" ("Did I Shave My Legs for This?" by Deana Carter): Deana beats him up at the beginning of the video for mispronouncing her name.
  • "Christ-Mas" ("This Kiss" by Faith Hill): Steven Goldmann directed both Faith's video and Cledus's shot-for-shot parody of the same.
  • "Coronary Life" ("Ordinary Life" by Chad Brock): Chad plays the doctor in the video.
  • "More Beaver" ("Me Neither" by Brad Paisley): Brad plays lead guitar.
  • Billy Gilman can be heard shouting "That's not funny, Cledus!" at the end of "My Voice", a parody of his own "One Voice".
  • Phil Vassar mumbles a line at the end of "Just Another Day in Parodies", a parody of his own "Just Another Day in Paradise": "Aw man, I'm not mad at you, Cledus. You're nice. Nice hair, I like that."
  • "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Pop" ("I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool" by Barbara Mandrell and George Jones): George sings guest vocals.
  • "Paycheck Woman" ("Redneck Woman" by Gretchen Wilson): Gretchen appears at the beginning of the video.
  • "Garth Must Be Busy" ("God Must Be Busy" by Brooks & Dunn): Ronnie Dunn, one-half of Brooks & Dunn, sings guest vocals.
  • He appears to have a really good relationship with Toby Keith, as Toby appeared in the video for "How Do You Milk a Cow" (a parody of "How Do You Like Me Now?!") and sang guest vocals on "I Love NASCAR" ("I Love This Bar"). Toby's go-to director, Michael Salomon, also directed the video for "Where's Your Mommy?" ("Who's Your Daddy?"), and Toby wrote a song on Bipolar and Proud.
• In 1995, a Twin Cities DJ recorded a parody of Shania Twain's Breakthrough Hit "Any Man of Mine" titled "Any Gal of Mine". Twain herself provides a spoken-word intro at the beginning.
• Forbidden Broadway Vol. 3 had the real Carol Channing interrupting an impersonator of herself to provide advice.
• Fred Schneider of The B-52s guested on Richard Cheese's parody of "Love Shack".
• Ramonetures are a band who cover Punk Rock songs In the Style of instrumental Surf Rock. When they tackled the X (US Band) catalog for the album Johnny Walk Don't Run Paulene, they had the assistance of X members Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebrake replicating their original guitar and drum parts.
• The Dead Kennedys:
  • In God We Trust, Inc had cover art by Winston Smith, depicting Jesus crucified on a cross made out of dollar bills. Smith has parodied this image for other bands' albums twice: One was Dread Kennedys' In Dub We Trust, which replaced the crucifix made of dollars to one made of cannabis leaves. The other was Duckmandu's Fresh Duck for Rotting Accordionists, which replaced Jesus' head with that of a duck and added an accordion strapped across his chest.
  • Jello Biafra makes an appearance on Blowfly's "Holiday in Cambodia" parody, "R. Kelly in Cambodia". The song was released on Alternative Tentacles, the record label owned by Biafra.
• Paul Hardcastle's 1985 hit "19" was parodied with the cricket-themed "N-N-Nineteen Not Out" by The Commentators, a musical project of impressionist Rory Bremner. An uncredited Hardcastle co-produced the parody, much against his label's objections.
• For Red Nose Day, Coldplay brought the cast of Game of Thrones for "The Musical" of the series. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) singing "the first romantic ballad about incest on Coldplay's career", Emilia Clarke (Daenerys) doing "Rastafarian Targaryen", Peter Dinklage crooning on how Tyrion Lannister is "a man for all seasons", and others, including Iwan Rheon's "I Am" Song for Ramsay Bolton ("I am a real bastard, and a little more mean...").
• Alanis Morissette appeared in The Late Late Show singing a parody of "Ironic" — which even mentions how there are no ironies in the original song. She also appeared in The Tonight Show singing an all-cluck cover of the same song alongside Jimmy Fallon and Meghan Trainor.
• For the video of "Irresistible", Fall Out Boy decided to it a riff on *NSYNC's iconic "It's Gonna Be Me" music video. Not only did they get Wayne Isham, who directed the original video, to handle directing duties, but *NSYNC members Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone cameod in it.
• The Sesame Street disco album Sesame Street Fever has an original Title Track which, as the name suggests, is a parody of "Night Fever" from Saturday Night Fever. Robin Gibb of The Bee Gees provided lead vocals.
• Elio e le Storie Tese parodied Patrick Hernandez' "Born to Be Alive" with their own "Born to Be Abramo". Not only Hernandez shows up in the song and sings a couple verses, he also appears in the video (at about 1:35), one of his rare appearances.
• LCD Soundsystem has a really popular fan-made music video featuring Kermit the Frog singing their song "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down" throughout the streets of New York, with the ending twist revealing that he's being puppeteered by the group's frontman James Murphy himself. The video came about as a stroke of luck as the fan met Murphy during a party, and the fact that he's present at all led many to think that the video was somehow official.
• The Baha Men recorded a parody of "Who Let the Dogs Out?" for the Disney album Mickey's Dance Party called "Who Woke Snow White Up?".
• Kyle "TV's Kyle" Carrozza and The Great Luke Ski provided backing vocals and the original music for Devo Spice's parody of their song "Pumpkin Bread", "Pumpkinhead".
• The Chalkeaters:
  • Gabe Newell recorded video clips for "Count To Three", as shown at the opening and closing of the song. According to a community post, he also recorded some verses, but requested that they be cut due to his dissatisfaction with his performance. Ellen McLain also reprises her role as GLaDOS.
  • Crush 40 vocalist Johnny Gioeli himself did the vocals for the Sonic the Hedgehog parody song "Crushing Thirties", which is itself an upbeat rock piece styled after Crush 40's other songs for the franchise, only with a cynical undertone commenting on Sonic's miserable life going into adulthood.
• Nanowar of Steel's "Pasadena 1994" is an Affectionate Parody of Sabaton, a Swedish Power Metal band known for anthems about military history. The song is an anthem about the 1994 FIFA World Cup match between Italy and Brazil, with Sabaton vocalist Joakim Brodén singing in the song and visibly trying not to crack up in the music video.

Politics

• The White House Correspondent Dinner has been used at times for comedians to poke fun at the sitting President, sometimes harshly, sometimes less. Sometimes the President takes part of the joke, for example George W. Bush teaming with Steve Bridges with the latter acting as his Inner Monologue.

Pro Wrestling

• TAKA Michinoku's gimmick is a parody of The Great Sasuke's original Masa Michinoku gimmick. Despite this, TAKA was allowed to work on the shows of Sasuke's Michinoku Pro Wrestling promotion.
• Following the decline of FMW, IWA Japan and the rest of the garbage circuit, Kikutaro took up a gimmick of parodying wrestlers who managed to retain their popularity. All Japan teamed him up with Abdullah the Butcher and New Japan had him beaten by Jushin Thunder Liger but it really crossed into this trope when Mick Foley brought him out as "Ebessan Jack" to challenge Samoa Joe at Ring of Honor's third anniversary.
• IWA Puerto Rico debuted a wrestler known as El Sensacional Carlitos in 2005, a parody of the island's famous Colón family. In 2008, WWC, the company owned by the Colón family patriarch, hired Carlitos and paired him up with Carlito Caribbean Cool, the most famous Colón still active on the island.

Puppet Shows

• Most performers seeking "Sesame Street" Cred will do this. For instance, R.E.M. singing a Sesame Street parody of "Shiny Happy People" called "Furry Happy Monsters". Candace Bergman took it a step further, not only appearing as Murphy Brown in one episode, but voicing her own Muppet parody, Murphy Brownbag, in another.
• When Stan Freberg saw how Jim Henson was having puppets lip-sync to his records on Sam and Friends, he not only gave full approval, he also cameoed in one episode to complain about them using his records (only for Kermit to whack him with a baseball bat).
• Following its Channel Hop to HBO, Sesame Street created two PSAs about respect, one an Affectionate Parody of Game of Thrones, the other of Westworld, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, Evan Rachel Wood, and Jeffrey Wright all reprised their roles from their respective series for the ads.
• Les Guignols de l'Info: For the twentieth birthday edition, real celebrities came, said they looked nothing like their puppets... while acting like them. For instance anchorman Marc-Olivier Fogiel kept the same hyena and Evil Laugh, and sport anchorman Nelson Monfort his puppet's Gratuitous English. Some politicians also commented on their alter ego.

Radio

• The National Lampoon Radio Hour did a bit called "Prison Farm"^note later released on the Gold Turkey album. The sketch, which satirized how the Watergate criminals were given slap-on-the-wrist sentences in Luxury Prison Suites, was done In the Style of an Blaxploitation movie trailer — so the Lampoon got Adolph Caesar^note later known for A Soldier's Story, who was the most prominent announcer for the actual trailers, to be the narrator.
• Brazilian radio station 98 FM has a sports program that uses defeats of their city's football teams to do mocking Song Parodies about said games the next day. At least two times they got the original singer to perform them.

Theatre

• Many performers for the various productions of Avenue Q have been Muppet alumni (notably Rick Lyon).

Video Games

• After a trailer for Final Fantasy XV featured Noctis and company driving around in a car, memes began to sprout up of Noctis and crew driving past or admiring other things. The game's director liked it, and Square Enix released a transparent PNG of the most common shot of the car and crew to help out with the meme.
• Capcom has provided assistance for the Ultimate Assist Me series by supplying funds so the creators wouldn't have to pay for the costs out of their pockets like they normally do. Also, at the end of Retro Assist Me, Yoshinori Ono makes a cameo.
• Red vs. Blue was discovered quite early on by Bungie. Rather than shut Rooster Teeth down for copyright infringement, Bungie gave them official permission to keep making the videos, and to this day Rooster Teeth continues making humorous content, not just for Halo, but for several other Microsoft-owned franchises as well.
• After My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic recieved a cease and desist from Hasbro, Lauren Faust decided to join the development team, offering to design them original characters to use for a new game.
• Michael Giacchino, the composer of several Medal of Honor games, also provides the level music for "Medal of Homer" in The Simpsons Game.
• Hyakutaro Tsukumo, the composer for several Thunder Force games, composed the soundtrack for Broken Thunder, a Fan Sequel. Unfortunately, it's strongly speculated that this is why he was left out of the soundtrack for Thunder Force VI.
• When planning their next project for the Switch, Brace Yourself Games expressed how cool it would be for them to include The Legend of Zelda characters as DLC for their debut game. Nintendo liked the idea so much that they gave the devs their full blessing, which is what led to the creation of Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer, a full-fledged Zelda spin-off.
• Jesse Cox's "Gentleman's Gaming Club" video on Control features an intro done in the style of the game's cutscenes, and includes Courtney Hope herself reprising her role as Jesse Faden. Given that Control already makes heavy use of live-action cutscenes, it looks and sounds almost exactly like the real thing.
• The series of animated spoof trailers (here is Episode 1) Capcom made to promote their Resident Evil 4 (Remake) is not just made In the Style of World Masterpiece Theatre, it was actually produced with the help of Nippon Animation themselves.

Web Animation

• For Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged, Team Four Star is allowed to sell albums of the remixed music because they have a contract with Square Enix and they pay SE a cut of the profit.
• Toy reviewer CookieSwirlC voices "PukieHurlC", a parody of her channel's mascot, in The Grossery Gang webseries' 2017 Christmas episode.
• The second part of Half Life: Side Story: Gaiden: HUNT DOWN FREE MAN, a parody of the infamous Hunt Down the Freeman, has an intro sequence which was provided by Deremix Productions, an animator who worked on some of the original game's cutscenes.
• Madoka Abridged: Episode 7 parodies the casting of Cristina Valenzuela as Homura by photoshopping her face over Homura's during several scenes. Cristina herself voiced Homura for the episode, and then commented on the video, to voice her approval, too.
• The episode of So This Is Basically... which covered Danny Phantom had Butch Hartman, the creator of Danny Phantom, designing and voicing an Original Character named Rebreather in the style of Danny Phantom's usual Monster of the Week villains. The episode for The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is sponsored by Falcom and has Sean Chiplock, Xanthe Huynh, and Edward Bosco reprising their roles as Rean Schwarzer, Altina Orion, and Machias Regnitz respectively.
• Something About: Lucas Gilbertson reprises his role as Zero in "Something About Mega Man X" and "Something About Mega Man X: Storm Eagle's Revenge".
• Steam Train: Ross and Barry's reactions to visiting Temmie Village in Undertale were taken and animated by none other than Temmie Chang herself.
• Joueur du Grenier's special on Scooby-Doo uses Scooby-Doo's official French VA.

Web Videos

• The staff at Funimation are good friends with Team Four Star, and a few of them have even cameoed in Dragon Ball Z Abridged; for example, Kyle Hebert plays Santa Claus in Christmas Tree of Might. They've also hired some of the TFS staff for their work, most notably Takahata101 playing one of the Create-A-Character voices in Dragon Ball Xenoverse (where he essentially plays DBZA's version of Nappa). TFS was also brought in to provide the voices for a cheesy low-budget movie recreation of Mr. Satan's "victory" over Cell during the Cell Games in an episode of Dragon Ball Z Kai, though Toei Animation made them take it out for the broadcast.
• George R. R. Martin appears in an episode of Funny or Die's recap of Game of Thrones, Gay of Thrones, in a scene that parodies The Princess Bride.
• Honest Trailers:
  • Ryan Reynolds himself voiced Deadpool in the episode riffing on his film. And again for Deadpool 2.
  • Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts starred in and co-wrote the script of the episode that lampooned Kong: Skull Island with Vogt-Roberts pointing out flaws for the Screen Junkies crew to riff on.
• Eleven Little Roosters ends in a scene mimicking the Metal Gear codecs... where one of the parties is Agent Kojima.
• GTA... but with talking trains!! is narrated by Mark Moraghan, the narrator of Seasons 17 to 21 of Thomas & Friends.
• Mega64 had a sketch where they were reenacting Super Mario Bros. on the streets of Los Angeles. In their own words...
  Rocco Botte: A skit that went great until some guy made it all awkward.
  • Most of their other sketches have someone well-known related to the subject matter in them as well, including Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hideo Kojima and Cliff Bleszinski.
• MonteFjanton's final six reviews of the Swedish-dubbed Dingo Pictures, which were combined into a full-length movie called Dingo's Inferno, features two of the dub actors from the films reprising their old roles. (One of them, Dan Bratt, had also helped out with their earlier review of Djurens konung.)
• The Nostalgia Critic:
  • At the end of the review of The Purge, there is a Brick Joke where an animated Pinky and the Brain split up. They actually got Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche to voice their respective characters.
  • When the Critic listed the "Top 11" worst and best episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Dante Basco reprised and parodied his role as Prince Zuko.
  • And once more in his review of Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas, where an animated segment with Penny near the end was voiced by Cree Summer, reprising her role from the series after so many years.
  • One of the commercial specials contains a parody of The Room (2003), with Greg Sestero reprising his role as Mark.
  • After ripping on numerous Mara Wilson films, she actually appears in his video to take a few shots back at him by dredging up some of the terrible home movies he made as a child.
• Not to be outdone, The Angry Video Game Nerd has had his own share of guest stars:
  • In his episode dedicated to dunking on various Toxic Avenger video game adaptations, all of them bad of course, he actually got Lloyd Kaufman himself to help him rip them apart. Lloyd is even more critical of them than The Nerd.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie features Howard Scott Warshaw, the actual developer of the infamous E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, As Himself no less.
  • Macaulay Culkin shows up at his door in one episode, disguised as a pizza boy, in order to pressure The Nerd into playing a bunch of terrible Home Alone video game adaptations.
  • When reviewing Pepsiman, he gets Mike Butters (yes, that Mike Butters) to reprise his role as the TV game guy from the game and show up to save him from Pepsiman.
  • When making fun of Jurassic Park: Trespasser, he actually gets Seamus Blackley, the game's producer who would go on create the Xbox, to not only answer some questions about it, but to help poke some fun at the game's infamously Troubled Production.
  • His DOOM video guess stars the John Romero to reprise his roll as The Icon of Sin.
• Postmodern Jukebox did a version of the Pinky and the Brain Theme. Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche reprise the roles, though there the mice wear "human suits" and are disguised as some old bartenders...
• The Supernatural cast joined both the Hillywood Show and Kings of Con
  • For the Supernatural parody, they also got the band Twenty One Two to record an extended parody of their previous rock cover of Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" for them, using the original instrumentation but rerecorded with the parody lyrics and extended for the outro of the song where the cast of the show dance to it.
• YouTube comedy channel Super Deluxe had a recurring series wherein Nick Lutsko takes quotes from a celebrity or work and sets them to music In the Style of a genre or performer, with titles formatted something like "(Person/Work) as a (Genre/Artist) Song": "Jerry (Maybe We Should Get Married)" is basically "Elaine Benes as a Best Coast Song", with actual Best Coast vocalist Bethany Cosentino singing lead.
• GilvaSunner, owner of the video game music channel of the same name that SiIvaGunner parodies, allowed a "High Quality Rip" to be uploaded for April Fools Day 2016.
• "Lo Pan Style", a Big Trouble in Little China-themed parody of Psy's "Gangnam Style", had James Hong reprising the role of David Lo Pan during the video.
• A couple of minor Kaamelott actors play roles in the fan web-series Brocéliande, notably Guillaume Briat (the Burgund King) and Bô Gaultier de Kermoal (Attila's bodyguard), although they don't reprise their roles from the main series.
• Tennis player Iga Swiatek posted a parody of The Lion King, which counts with the guy who dubbed Mufasa in her native Poland!
• Sean Gerardi's hypothetical The Mandalorian Chapter 21 epilogue includes Emily Swallow playing the Armorer again.
• Danielle Harris, who played Tosh in Urban Legend, did her character's lines in the episode of They Talk parodying the film, complete with some very mocking references to the Halloween franchise and how her character in those films was developed.

Western Animation

• Big Hero 6: The Series: Gordon Ramsay voiced "Bolton Gramercy", a Caustic Critic who participates in an Iron Chef-like competition. He essentially plays himself as portrayed in Hell's Kitchen.
• Schoolhouse Rock! actor Jack Sheldon has done this many times.
  • The Simpsons episode "The Day the Violence Died" contained a parody of "I'm Just a Bill" with Sheldon singing it.
  • Sheldon lent his voice to Family Guy's parodies of SHR, as well.
    Singers: Vagina Junction, what's your function?
    Sheldon: Takin' in sperm and spittin' out babies!
  • Johnny Bravo had an episode titled "The Sensitive Male" where Johnny tries to get a date with a girl who likes sensitive guys. A man (voiced by Jack Sheldon) comes along and, in a parody of Schoolhouse Rock!, offers Johnny lessons on how to be a kind and sensitive guy.
• The Simpsons:
  • "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)", The B-52s parody their own "Love Shack" as "Glove Slap", while the later episodes "Three Gays of the Condo" and "Large Marge" featured Jackson Browne and the Baha Men parodying their own respective work.
  • In "Angry Dad: The Movie", not only did Nick Park voice himself in the setup to the Wallace & Gromit parody Willis & Crumble in Better Gnomes and Gardens, the stop motion animation team included Teresa Drilling, a regular member of the Aardman Animations crew who was a key animator on The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
  • "Steal This Episode" contains a gag where the government hires Judas Priest to get Homer into their custody for digital piracy, with frontman Rob Halford singing a piracy-themed version of "Breaking the Law".
  • The layout artists from The Ren & Stimpy Show worked on the R&S parody scene in "Brother from the Same Planet".
  • "Sideshow Bob Roberts" has a scene where Bart plays with a Flintstones toy phone, which features Henry Corden as the voice of Fred Flintstone.
  • "Treehouse of Horror XXVIII" includes a Coraline parody in which Neil Gaiman voices Snowball II.
  • "Homer at the Bat" features the song "Talkin' Softball", a parody of "Talkin' Baseball" sung by the original artist, Terry Cashman himself.
  • "Three Men and a Comic Book" has Bart having an Inner Monologue moment ala The Wonder Years, with Daniel Stern as the narrator.
  • "Bart the Bad Guy" is centered around a parody of Avengers: Endgame and has multiple people who work with the Marvel Cinematic Universe guest starring, such as Endgame's directors The Russo Brothers as the Marble Studios executives, Marvel Studios' president Kevin Feige as Chinnos (the Marble version of Thanos), and Cobie Smulders as Hydrangea, one of the main characters of Vindicators: Crystal War and its sequel.
  • "Little Big Mom" has the Virtual Doctor software, with the titular doctor speaking in the same manner as America Online's famous voice notifications ("You've got mail"), voiced by the actual America Online voice guy himself, Elwood Edwards. ("You've got... leprosy.")
  • In "Large Marge" and "Thank God It's Doomsday", The Baha Men have appeared performing a parody of their hit song "Who Let the Dogs Out".
  • "Bart's in Jail" features a cameo of Bill Cipher voiced by his creator and voice actor, Alex Hirsch.
  • "Treehouse of Horror XXXIII" features the Death Note parody "Death Tome", whose Animesque animation was done by DR Movie, who worked on the anime (specifically, they did background art, clean-up and in-between animation).
  • In "King-Size Homer", the producers hired Joan Kenley, the actual voice actor behind countless automated phone messages, to provide the prerecorded response we hear when Homer tries to call the nuclear power plant ("The fingers you have used to dial are too fat").
  • "Behind The Laughter" extensively parodies Behind the Music. Jim Forbes guested as the narrator, and the Behind the Music producers let the Simpsons animators use their graphics package to get the look just right.
• Family Guy has had several actors lend their voices to parodies of shows or movies they were in.
  • Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross reprised their roles as Elise and Steven Keaton in a Family Ties parody.
  • Mark Hamill was Luke Skywalker in a Star Wars parody.
  • Frank Welker voiced Fred in a Scooby-Doo parody.
  • The live-action re-enactment of the All Just a Dream Wham Shot from Dallas has Patrick Duffy and Victoria Principal reprising their roles.
  • George Lucas backed Family Guy's Star Wars retellings as he's a fan of the show. Almost subverted in the case of Carrie Fisher, who initially refused to be part of the parody, assuming she'd be asked to play Leia again. However, she got on board when she was told that she'd still be playing Angela, which was her normal role on the show.
• The Bob's Burgers episode "The Belchies" features a song in the end credits that's a send-up of "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" sung by Cyndi Lauper.
• Futurama:
  • "The Deep South" is set in Atlanta, Georgia, which is now a submerged city filled with mer-people. Helping to explain this is Donovan, parodying his own song "Atlantis" as "Atlanta."
  • "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" heavily parodies Star Trek: The Original Series, with the actors who played the main cast appearing as themselves. They are not shy about poking fun at themselves or each other.
    Nimoy: Hey! We've done heroic things too!
    Nichols: Yeah! In the third season I kissed Shatner!
• Robot Chicken gets a surprising number of actors and actresses to reprise their famous roles for skits that parody their films. Among some of them them are:
  • Billy Dee Williams, Mark Hamill, Ahmed Best, and even George Lucas himself for Star Wars sketches.
  • Bob Bergen, the current voice of Porky Pig, reprises his role as Porky for at least two sketches.
  • The main cast from the Scooby-Doo live-action films.
  • Frank Welker voicing Megatron, Soundwave, and Doctor Claw.
  • Cree Summer reprised her role as Penny for an Inspector Gadget/The Terminator crossover skit.
  • Jon Berg, who did much of the stop motion effects for the original Star Wars films, did the stop motion animation for the Nerd in his Tauntaun costume in the second Star Wars special.
  • Christopher Lloyd played Doc Brown in a couple of the Back to the Future sketches.
  • Stan Lee appeared as himself several times.
  • Dave Foley voiced Flik again in a Bug's Life sketch.
  • Patrick Stewart occasionally appears to play Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek sketches.
  • Dante Basco voiced Zuko again in an Avatar sketch.
  • Rachael Leigh Cook, who starred in a famous anti-drug Public Service Announcement in the '90s where she smashes a kitchen up with a frying pan, voiced the same character in a parody of such where she turns into an unhinged psychopath.
  • Fred Savage reprised his role as Oswald for an Oswald sketch.
  • Tom Hanks's brother Jim Hanks, who is the official understudy voice actor of Woody reprised his role for the Toy Story Meets Pinko sketch.
• Blizzard gave South Park a number of their in-game assets for the creation of "Make Love, Not Warcraft". More audaciously, they did filming on the Burning Crusade alpha server. Those people in the background jumping around and doing whatever? Real players blissfully unaware of what was being filmed near them.
• MAD gets some Parody Assistance in a few episodes. For example, Tara Strong lends her voice to Twilight Sparkle in the sketches "My Little War Horse", "My Little PWNY" and "Adjustment Burro", Raven in "Teen Titanic" and Bubbles in "2 Broke Powerpuff Girls", and they got Will Friedle to reprise his role as 2011 Lion-O in "ThunderLOLcats". The sketch "McDuck Dynasty" also has Jeff Bergman reprising his roles as Daffy Duck (from The Looney Tunes Show and Tiny Toon Adventures) and Elmer Fudd (also from Tiny Toon Adventures).
• The Rugrats episode "Sour Pickles" contains a Rocky and Bullwinkle parody that features June Foray as the expies of Rocky and Natasha.
• The Duck Dodgers parody of Samurai Jack had creative consultation from creator Genndy Tartakovsky (who also makes a voice cameo) and features Mako as the voice of the Aku parody.
• In addition to the Jack Sheldon example above, Johnny Bravo also featured a cross-over episode with Scooby-Doo, with almost all of the original voice cast. ^note  This marked Hadley Kay's first and only time to voice Scooby. BJ Ward first voiced Velma here, and would for 5 more years. They also got Joseph Barbera as a story consultant and character designers Iwao Takamoto and Ed Benedict to do the character layouts and background designs.
• Freakazoid!: For the Jonny Quest parody "Toby Danger", they got Benton Quest's original voice actor Don Messick to voice Benton Quest's counterpart and "Race" Bannon's second voice actor Granville Van Dusen (who voiced "Race" Bannon in the revival shows The New Adventures of Jonny Quest and Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures as well as the television films Jonny's Golden Quest and Jonny Quest vs. the Cyber Insects) to voice "Race" Bannon's counterpart.
• Hanna-Barbera layout artist Ed Benedict, one of John Kricfalusi's biggest influcences, worked on the two Yogi Bear shorts that he made.
• Art Babbitt, one of the key animators on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, animated on the Merrie Melodies short Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs which is a parody of the former.
• The Wander over Yonder episode "The Cartoon" featured a parody of fellow Disney series Gravity Falls with Jason Ritter, Kristen Schaal and Alex Hirsch voicing the expies of their respective characters. Said parody was also partly a Scooby-Doo cartoon, hence why Frank Welker voices the narrator.
• The Amphibia episode "Wax Museum" features frog versions of Grunkle Stan, Soos, and Schmebulock, all voiced by Alex Hirsch.
• For the premiere of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "A Canterlot Wedding", which was based heavily on the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, The Hub aired special bumpers featuring Tori Spelling, who co-hosted E!'s coverage of the wedding.
• Klasky-Csupo animated a Rugrats parody in The Fairly Oddparents special "Channel Chasers".
• In the Evil Con Carne episode, Max Courage, the titular Jonny Quest expy and his brother are voiced by Quinten Flynn and Scott Menville, who respectively voiced Jonny in The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest and The New Adventures of Jonny Quest.

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