Parody Displacement / Live-Action TV

• Magnum, P.I. hasn't completely fallen into obscurity, but its memory is being kept alive mostly by people on the Internet who love explaining what Chip and Dale's outfits on Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers were based on.
• The opening credits of Police Squad! are almost a shot by shot parody of both the images and music of the little known '60s series M Squad.
  • Police Squad! also heavily parodies the look of The Streets of San Francisco, a show which was very popular at the time but lacks the stick-in-the-memory qualities of such contemporaries as Kojak, Starsky & Hutch, or Ironside (1967). And the iconic shot of the bubble light atop the police cruiser was lifted wholesale from the closing credits of the first season of Hawaii Five-O.
• The show-within-a-show Tool Time on the sitcom Home Improvement is a parody of This Old House, with the main host (Tim) being a charismatic salesman and his co-host (Al) being an anti-charismatic, bland, flannel-wearing man, who nonetheless possesses unrivaled expert knowledge of the topic at hand. They are both a direct parody of Bob Vila and Norm Abram's screen presence. In addition, scenes outside of Tool Time point out how most of the actual renovation work is done by a trained crew and that the hosts' contributions are mostly symbolic. In-universe the show was occasionally noted as a knockoff, and Tim had an Unknown Rival relationship with Villa when he guest starred. However, as Home Improvement has managed to remain popular and remembered in popular culture more than 20 years after it first aired, while Vila and Abram have been eclipsed by the newer, younger talent in the "Home Improvement" genre such as Ty Pennington and Mike Holmes, the fact that Tool Time is a parody is largely lost on those who watch the reruns today.
• When Doctor Who started in 1963, as a budget-saving measure the Doctor's possibly-infinitely-large-inside spacetime travelling ship was disguised as an ordinary, everyday object that all viewers would be familiar with — a police box, a telephone kiosk linked directly to the nearest police station, for patrolling officers or members of the public to contact the station. Hundreds of the blue Metropolitan Police examples could be seen across London, with variants in other cities and towns throughout Britain. Within the next decade however, these were getting phased out as portable communications improved, meaning even by the time the original series ended in 1989 the box was more familiar as a symbol of Doctor Who than as a real thing. By the time the series was revived in 2005, there hadn't been a working police box anywhere in the UK for over 20 years^note (since the show's revival, a genuine working one has been installed in the Bournemouth suburb of Boscombe; the council admitted at the time that it's there as a tourist attraction as much as it is a means of calling the police), and a line of expository dialogue was required in the first new episode to explain the TARDIS's appearance. Indeed, the TARDIS is usually the first thing anyone thinks of upon seeing a picture of a police box.
  • Even Sarah Jane makes the mistake in one episode, in which she travels back to 1950s England.
  • There is a police box right outside Earl's Court tube station in London, big and blue as anything. This isn't an original though, it was built in 1996. It was put there because tourists who had seen Doctor Who were disappointed by the lack of police boxes in England.
  • This has led to possibly the only prop-based instance of the Celebrity Paradox — in the real world, a police box would be anything but inconspicuous, because just about everybody in Britain would recognise it as the TARDIS. This is occasionally lampshaded, with mixed success/cringeworthiness, in UK media.
  • Possibly the only legally binding case of the Parody Displacement: the BBC trademarked the look of the TARDIS in 1996. The Metropolitan Police challenged it, and lost, with the judge saying that it was far more recognizable as a symbol of Doctor Who than as a symbol of the police. (The fact that the police had never attempted to trademark it themselves over the course of 40 years also counted against them.)
  • Nicely spoofed in one Eleventh Doctor Christmas Special when the Doctor gets his space suit helmet stuck backwards, and needs to recruit a local to help him find the TARDIS. After she follows his instructions on what to look for, he goes inside... and remembers that he is in a time period where there are still real police boxes.
• Serious and downbeat 1970s drama series Secret Army, about the Belgian resistance during WW2, was closely parodied in knockabout 1980s comedy 'Allo 'Allo! — which went on to be much more popular and longer-running than the original. To this day, most fans of 'Allo 'Allo! are unaware that it began as a parody at all...
• The Batusi from Batman (1966) is far better remembered than the Watusi it was originally punning on. The Batusi is now better known as "that dance John Travolta does in Pulp Fiction" (not to be confused with "That dance John Travolta does in Saturday Night Fever"). Or from The Simpsons: "How come Batman doesn't dance anymore?". This has now collapsed in on itself and become a double-Parody Displacement, as the Batusi is more widely remembered as the source of "ualuealuealeuale", one of the first really big gags to take off on ytmnd.
• Speaking of Batman (1966), most fans of the Dark Age Batman regard the 1960s series as representative of that era's Batman, when actually it was widely regarded as an intentionally over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek parody of the comic book. According to That Other Wiki, the comic later turned up the camp because of the TV show's success.
  • That didn't stop parents from taking their kids to see the later Tim Burton movies expecting the same style as the Adam West series. Boy were they in for a surprise...
    • The '60s TV series was also a parody of the '40s Batman film serials, especially the cliffhanger narrations.
• The Prisoner (1967) is, possibly, a Sequel Series to spy series Danger Man, or at least a Spiritual Successor. The cartoon Danger Mouse takes its title (and protagonist's name) from Danger Man. Both are much better remembered.
  • The theme for the American release, Secret Agent, is a staple of oldies radio.
• In one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the visual similarity between Spike and Billy Idol is lampshaded. To a large number of fans, Spike is far more recognisable than Billy Idol. The key thing here is the look; many people have heard of Billy Idol, but don't know what he looks like, whereas everyone recognizes Spike when they see him.
  • The series goes on to say that Idol took his look from Spike...
• The children's TV series LazyTown has the song "Cooking by the Book", which was eclipsed by its comic mashup remix with the hip-hop song "Step Yo Game Up" featuring Lil' Jon. Its mashup actually has more than 30 million views on YouTube, whereas the original song has only 6 million views.
• These days, the phrase "Bozo the Clown" has become a commonly recognizable meme. A high-profile example is a Seinfeld episode in which George wanted Bozo the Clown for his girlfriend's son's birthday party. But how many people know that the phrase refers to a specific, original, historical Bozo the Clown dating back to 1946? Even by the time when the Seinfeld episode aired in 1994, Bozo was 50 years old, and some of the episode's humor revolved around the character's obscurity.
  • Another Seinfeld example; anyone who grew up watching TV in the past 30 years is probably familiar with George's answering machine message ("Believe it or not, George isn't at home...") But it's rare to find a Seinfeld fan under 40 who is aware that the message is a parody of the theme song from a once-popular television show called The Greatest American Hero.
• People who grew up in the 1980s might be familiar with the series Mr. Belvedere, starring Christopher Hewett in the title role. However, many of them might not be aware that this was based on the Clifton Webb movie Sitting Pretty, which was in turn based upon the novel Belvedere, both from The '40s.
• The TV show Blackadder is now better known than the Robert Louis Stevenson novel The Black Arrow, which the title is a Shout-Out to and which the first series (named The Black Adder) parodied.
  • The intro of the second season features a snake crawling over the opening titles, and being dragged back into shot by black-gloved hands when it leaves the screen too quickly. Hardly anyone nowadays knows this is a parody of the opening titles from I, Claudius.
• Once upon a time, there was a UK game show called If I Ruled The World. It inspired another game show called Parlamentet. If I Ruled The World stopped after two seasons — Parlamentet, however, is still going strong. In Scandinavia, admittedly, but twenty-two seasons deserve a mention.
• Wheel of Fortune: Many people may remember the jingle "I'm a Wheel Watcher", used in commercials (and sometimes even on the show itself) for most of the 80s and 90s. What most people may not realize is that the song is a rewrite of "I'm a Girl Watcher", a 1960s blue-eyed soul song.
• Saturday Night Live':
  • The Continental recurring sketch with Christopher Walken is actually based on a real TV show. The Continental was a short-lived CBS program that aired Saturday nights during the 1952-53 season, and starred Renzo Cesana as the title character. Its target audience was lonely, dateless women (though when it moved to ABC, it aired in the daytime for lonely, bored housewives). The combination of the subjective camera angles and the Continental's charm was designed to make these women believe they were being romanced through their TV sets. The SNL version is exactly like that, except Walken's Continental has been flanderized to a Handsome Lech-cum-Stalker with a Crush-cum-Dirty Old Man-cum-Casanova Wannabe.
  • Similarly, more people recognize Mike Myers' "Simon" sketches than "Simon in the Land of Drawings", the British series that it spoofed.
    • Not if they are old enough to have watched Captain Kangaroo as kids.
  • The ''Prose and Cons'' short, particularly Eddie Murphy's "kill my landlord" poem, is more familiar these days than the Norman Mailer/Jack Henry Abbott debacle that it was satirizing.
  • The "Royal Deluxe II" car commercial^note in which a rabbi performs a bris in the back seat at 40 mph to demonstrate the soft ride is continuously available on Hulu while the original Lincoln-Mercury ads it spoofs, despite old car commercials as a class being rarely copyright-policed at all, are hard to find on the Internet.
  • Weekend Update:
    • The title is actually a play on NBC News Update, a series of 90-second newscasts that NBC aired during its primetime programming since 1975.
    • When Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was on his deathbed in 1975, news programs would sometimes update his condition on slow news days. Sometimes, these reports would simply state that "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still alive." He finally died in November of that year. Then, Chevy Chase started to feature This Just In! reports that "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." The catch phrase remained in the public consciousness long after the countdown to Franco's death.
    • Weekend Update's Point/Counterpoint ("Jane, you ignorant slut!"), was a parody of a 60 Minutes segment that aired in the seventies until it was replaced by A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney. The segment was also parodied by Airplane! ("I say, let 'em crash!").
  • The Dear Sister digital short, where everyone shoots each other while Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" plays, is probably much more famous than the scene from the second season finale of The O.C. that it was spoofing.
  • Not many people know that the nickname for the original cast, the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players", was a reference to a competing show called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell^note That show was why SNL was originally called just Saturday Night, taking the name Saturday Night Live after Cosell's show was cancelled, which had a trio of comedy performers called the "Prime Time Players" – all three of whom (Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Christopher Guest) went on to join the SNL cast.
  • Can most people even remember what George H. W. Bush sounded and acted like? Or are you more likely to picture Dana Carvey doing his impression of Bush? The original was only President of the United States, and within the lifetimes of many of us alive today. Likely the same could be said of Gerald Ford and Chevy Chase as well.
    • This is the fate of MANY politicians. Bob Dole, however, may be the all-time king. In addition to a satirical depiction of him in the 1996 "Treehouse of Horror" episode of The Simpsons, he went on to star in a series of commercials for Viagra... and THEN starred in a series of Pepsi commercials that were parodies of his Viagra commercials! He has also been immortalized in the Neon Genesis Evangelion fandub parody "Redeath". Not bad for a Presidential hopeful who lost badly and immediately faded out.
  • An inversion of the Trope. While "Hans und Franz" never eclipsed Arnold Schwarzenegger by a long shot, many of their features and Running Gags are incorporated in the numerous expies of him.
  • Many people didn't know that Harry Cary was a real person (much less his profession) and assumed he was a character created by Will Ferrell.
  • Even the catchphrase, "Live from New York, it's Saturday night!" was borrowed from the opening line of The Ed Sullivan Show: "Live from New York, it's The Ed Sullivan Show!".
  • The satirical "Little Chocolate Donuts" ad with John Belushi left a stronger impression than the Wheaties commercial featuring Bruce Jenner^note who later transitioned to Caitlyn Jenner which was parodying.
• Horatio Hornblower had an obvious influence on Star Trek frequently acknowledged by people who worked on the series. The original series was also influenced by the TV Westerns of its day, but now more people have heard of Star Trek than Gunsmoke. Gene Roddenberry specially referenced both Horatio Hornblower and the highly successful show Wagon Train in his original pitches and as a result, both series are remembered only for the phrases "Horatio Hornblower in space" and "Wagon Train to the Stars".
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 popularized many old and obscure Sci-Fi movies simply because the old and obscure movies were the cheapest to get the rights to. The show itself owes a lot to a tradition of host segments on old horror movies (see Horror Host) dating back to the 1950s, and started in a similar vein—a local show on a station that needed filler. Its willingness to mock the movie not just during breaks but during the runtime, its reliance on sarcasm and wit rather than the stock campiness-and-bad-puns format of other hosts, and its heavy utilization of home video have insured that it outlasted and overshadowed most of its ancestors.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus:
  • A lot of sketches are parodies of British TV shows that were popular during the late 1960s and early 1970s. For example, "How To Do It?" is a spoof of the BBC children's program Blue Peter. "The Golden Age of Ballooning" spoofed costume dramas on the BBC. Whicker's World spoofed TV presenter Alan Whicker who had a travel show. The spinning globe was also an official BBC bumper between broadcasts. The sketch The Bishop is a parody of the opening titles from The Saint. Many people who grew up outside the United Kingdom or who are younger than the 1970s will probably not understand something is being parodied.
  • Flying Circus managed to do this to a figure of speech, of all things. The show's classic "Spanish Inquisition" sketch is kicked off when the Spanish Inquisition bursts into a boring British drawing room drama after a man gets tired of being badgered with questions, and cries out, "Mr. Wentworth just told me to come in here and say there was trouble at the mill, that's all! I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!" Many younger viewers might be unaware that "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!" was a well-known Stock Joke that had been used in English drama and television for decades before Monty Python came along. The Pythons, in their sketch, responded with "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!". Guess which phrase is more well-remembered today.
• Referenced in the game show Beat the Geeks. The host of the show once jokingly referred to Michael Jackson as "the guy who did all those Weird Al parodies". Sadly, the Effect did not help music geek Andy Zax. He was unable to describe the cover of Weird Al's album "Off The Deep End", despite it being a parody of Nirvana's "Nevermind", the topic of the previous question.
• Popular and light-hearted WW2-themed TV sitcom Hogan's Heroes was considered at the time to be a rip-off of the darkly humourous 1953 movie Stalag 17 (itself an adaptation of the Broadway play of the same name), starring William Holden. While the producers of Hogan's Heroes never acknowledged the parody, the two were similar enough to inspire a successful lawsuit by the creators of Stalag 17; even down to the name (and look) of the bumbling German guard "Sgt. Schulz". Today, Hogan's Heroes is an icon of American pop culture; while Stalag 17 is known only to serious classic film and theatre buffs.
• Chappelle's Show made popular many things, but none of them are as readily quoted as David Chappelle's Rick James impersonation: "I'm Rick James, bitch!" If you were to ask anybody born after 1980, they wouldn't even know who the real Rick James is, except for some funny sketch from a comedy television show. Also, the show's famous parody of Wayne Brady can seem very inexplicable to younger viewers; at the time, Brady was known almost solely for family-friendly roles and game show hosting, so seeing him acting like a sociopathic gangbanger was kind of like watching Fred Rogers getting high. In the years since, however, Brady has done significantly more adult-aimed projects, and thus no longer has the ultra-squeaky clean and wholesome image he used to.
• Children who grew up watching Sesame Street in the early-mid 1980s were likely introduced to Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp" character from the shorts starring Maria (Sonia Manzano) doing a Chaplin impression (with Emilio Delgado playing the Tramp's Butt-Monkey) before (or even instead of) ever seeing the original Chaplin movies. Either that, or they saw the original TV and print ads for the IBM PS1 computer, which adopted Chaplin's Tramp as an unofficial spokesperson (four years after his death!) in 1981.
  • Many songs are spoofs of pop songs. Due to them either being too old or too adult for children to have heard the original, the Sesame Street parody is more likely to be recognized:
  • "That's the Letter O", comma a parody of "That's the Way We Flow" by Queen Latifah.
  • "Don't Know Y", a parody of "Don't Know Why" by Norah Jones.
  • "I Want to Count", a parody of "I Want to Rock" by Cab Calloway.
  • "Ten Commandments of Health" is a parody of "Ten Commandments of Love" by The Moonglows.
  • "Eating Cookie" is a parody of "Makin' Whoopee" by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn.
  • "Let's Lay an Egg" is a parody of "Let's Fall in Love" by Cole Porter.
  • More recent example: Feist's parody of her song "1234", refitted to be about counting to 4, is more popular than the original and has more views.
• Famous Mexican comedian and writer Chespirito has several:
  • El Chapulín Colorado is a parody of both the superhero genre and the tokusatsu genre, especially Ultraman, but the show is so popular in Latin America and has been in reruns for so many decades that most people would probably associate Ultraman with Chapulin than vice versa.
  • Chompiras and Botija is a parody of The Honeymooners, problem is, the original Honeymooners never was popular in Latin America and not even run in some countries, so very few Latins other than TV Geeks would know the reference.
• Community:
  • An in-universe example. Britta does an impression of a bit Jon Stewart does frequently on The Daily Show, itself an impression of Johnny Carson, which comes off as a weird impersonation of Carson. When asked "Is that your Johnny Carson?" Britta is confused and says no, it was her Jon Stewart.
  • Later in the same episode another in-universe example plays off the first in-universe one: when Starburns does his Carson impression, Troy says he's "got Britta down."
• In-universe in Parks and Recreation, at Ann and Chris' going-away party, Chris gets a rubber John F. Kennedy mask and begins to recite his "Ask not what your country can do for you..." line. Andy mistakes it for coming from Family Guy.
• In Spain, La Hora Chanante's sketch "Hijo de puta más" (More son of a bitch) is better known than the song that it's based on, Mr. T's "Treat Your Mother Right".
• The Muppet Show was originally a parody of vaudeville theater and variety TV shows. It also included many songs and acts from the vaudeville era, which would have otherwise been unknown to young viewers in the 70s. Today, even songs that were then contemporary are probably now only remembered by their Muppet Show appearances. The same is probably true for at least half the guest stars. The fact that viewers do not remember vaudeville is not entirely unexpected. It was a dominant form of theatrical entertainment from the 1880s to the 1930s, but was considered unable to compete with the then-innovative sound films at the movie theatres (or with the fact that tickets to a movie theatre were often much cheaper). During the 1930s, several companies and theatres previously counting on vaudeville for their profits, either shut down or invested in the film industry. Most of the old vaudeville stars were forced to either retire, or try their hands at a film career. References to vaudeville in the 1940s were already considered retro. About 70 years later, they are references to an entirely different era.
• The syndicated talk show The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet lasted just two seasons and is largely forgotten. However, the Spaghetti Cat meme, which it unwittingly originated, is still around.
• Mythbusters: Adam Savage's Catchphrase "I Reject Your Reality and substitute my own!" actually comes from the 1984 film The Dungeonmaster. He did give its current literal meaning, though.
• Scotch and Wry: The cultural legacy of the Last Call sketches far outstrips that of the sermonettes they were actually parodying. There doesn't seem to be a conclusive date as to when the original Late Call finished up but it was probably at some point during the early nineties.
• The Drew Carey version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? includes constant jabs at Drew and Ryan for "having two shows" and joking plugs for The Drew Carey Show, which ran on the same network during the same period, and was quite popular. Popular enough, in fact, that Drew Carey's involvement in pitching Whose Line to the network was what got the show and its cast brought to the United States from England. These days, Whose Line still has a dedicated fanbase, and has had a successful revival in 2013. The Drew Carey Show is not shown in reruns anymore, and while people probably remember when it was on, don't think of it much, except as "the other show Drew and Ryan were on while they were doing Whose Line." (Or that one show where Craig Ferguson got his start in the US, though that's not exactly true...)
  • Gene Rayburn, host of Match Game '73, often teased panelist Richard Dawson with "if you ever get your own show," when Dawson was host of Family Feud.
  • Drew's version also contained several jokes about the quality and success of the TV movie Geppetto, an adaptation of Pinocchio which Drew starred in and Wayne Brady was featured in. It is forgettable enough that most people only know of it now through its ridicule on Whose Line.
    • Similarly, most people who've seen "Terminator 2: the Superfantastic Musical" would be surprised to learn that Bob Patterson was a real show starring the real Jason Alexander.
• FC De Kampioenen: Carmen's dog Nero was originally named after the Belgian comic strip character Nero. Since 2002 the comic strip has been terminated and the albums are no longer available in regular stores, making the original reference more obscure. Most younger people will probably assume it is a reference to the Roman emperor Nero.
• Spitting Image: This show featuring puppet versions of famous celebrities has also caused some Memetic Mutation. Today many people in the UK remember Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher more as in their grotesque villainous puppet versions than as Real Life people. A good example is Thatcher beating up members of her cabinet in many sketches, which a lot of people almost assume she did.
  • And, arguably, most Americans have no idea the British TV show even existed (much less the short-lived US adaptation.) They only know the puppets, which appeared in Genesis's music video for their song Land of Confusion.
• In 1986 BBC Scotland ran a documentary about football called Only a Game?. In 1987, they ran a Self-Parody called Only an Excuse?? Today OAE?'s parody of football and Scottish culture is a fixture of the Hogmanay schedules and has had several live shows, while Only a Game? remains a thirty year old documentary (although there is talk of an updated version).
• The Canadian Sketch Comedy series The Red Green Show is a loose parody of The Red Fisher Show, a Canadian comedy series that aired from 1965 to 1989. In both Canada and the United States, The Red Fisher Show has become completely obscure in comparison.
• Die Wochenshow, given its massive success in Germany, naturally did it when they spoofed lesser known shows, such as Tsjakkaa! Du schaffst es.
  • Anke Engelke's portrayal of Ricky as The Ditz was so popular (she would actually return to the role on occasion on other shows for years to come), it obviously had this effect for people not too familiar with pop music. In fact, Tic Tac Toe's success had also been massive but relatively brief, and both Ricky's solo career and the later reunion were particularly short-lived.
  • Engelke's parodies of politician Regine Hildebrandt were also prominent for a while. There is a rumor that Hildebrandt once entered a cab and the driver was completely surprised that she was actually real.
• Partly a case with Greek sitcoms from the 1990s and 2000s, such as Konstantinou kai Elenis and Savatogennimenes. They often included satirical references and even episodes with Whole Plot References to a number of "serious" dramatic series and long-running Soap Operas of their era, counting on the audience getting the jokes. One or two decades later, many of these sitcoms are still being broadcast on reruns and are familiar to most Greek television viewers. (The programs of old channels such as Mega Channel, have consisted primarily of reruns for years.) The dramatic series mentioned are rarely being broadcast anymore (with several of them considered too dated), and the soap operas are both long-defunct and never chosen for reruns by their channels. Quite a number of viewers have no idea what is being satirized.
• A lot of Riverdale fans didn't realise that Veronica's "Your Brain On Jingle Jangle" scene was a parody of a 1990s anti-heroin PSA.
• For the 73rd Tony Awards, James Corden (as well as some other former hosts) sang a parody of "Michael in the Bathroom" in a bathroom stall about being insecure about their jobs as hosts. A lot of casual viewers didn't recognize the song from Be More Chill. Since Be More Chill was only given one nomination for Best Score (with the song's original singer, George Salazar, being snubbed for Featured Actor) and composer Joe Iconis wasn't even aware there would be such an extensive parody, several fans were upset that the song was parodied without giving a proper boost to the show, since it's not very well known outside of the theater fandom. Corden, as well as others in the theater community, later gave formal credit on social media, linking to videos of Salazar's original performance.
• Kaamelott: Many French people will have first heard the names of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table from this very popular parody series rather than from more serious sources.
• Most of the major villains in Stranger Things—Vecna, the Mind Flayer, the Demogorgon, etc.—are named after monsters from Dungeons & Dragons, since the kids are depicted as avid D&D players. Thanks to the show's massive popularity, though, they're (arguably) better-known than their namesakes at this point.
• The Munsters: The first season's opening sequence is an Affectionate Parody of that of The Donna Reed Show. The popularity of The Munsters outlasted The Donna Reed Show, so most modern viewers wouldn't know that it is a parody.
• The Lloyd Bridges vehicle Sea Hunt is probably less familiar to modern audiences than the spoofs of it in Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Hot Shots! Part Deux, especially the line "By this time my lungs were aching for air!"

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