Cheat Slayer was canceled after one chapter primarily because of this trope.
Many Stock Parody Jokes are shallow parodies.Ĭompare "Common Knowledge", where audiences assume that something is part of a work or genre even though it isn't.Ĭontrast Parody Displacement, when the parody is so good that it's funny even without reference to the original work, and may even eclipse the original in popularity.
Can also overlap with Cowboy BeBop at His Computer if the parodists are really on the ball with this. See also Dead Unicorn Trope for a similar concept applied to tropes. Subtrope of Outside Joke, a kind of humour that relies on the audience's unfamiliarity with the subject. Has been known to overlap with Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch. Related: Narrow Parody, in which the target is something relatively recent due to the assumption the target audience won't recognize something older even if it's riper for spoofing and Redundant Parody, where the parody writers actually do what the piece's real creators would do, but think they are writing a clever spoof.
It's notable that some of the below examples are intentional shallow parodies and derive humor from getting things wrong. A Shallow Parody can be funnier, and more universal, than an overdone Affectionate Parody because it demands less familiarity of the target from the audience. Sometimes these parodies can be understood as effective parodies of trailers, of basic premises, or as exaggerations of elements in The Theme Park Version of said subject matter. Occasionally, the parodists may make good guesses and succeed anyway. For example, if you're parodying a film that hasn't come out yet, the trailer may be all you have to go on (although parodying something that has not yet branded itself into the public's consciousness would seem a little pointless). It will infuriate people who are familiar with the target and will make the fence-sitting audience think, "since all they're talking about is this other work, maybe I should check that out instead of listening to this person talk over and over about how bad it is". Trying to satirize something out of total hatred or dislike for a target but without trying to address an audience who may or may not know that work is not going to help anyone. The merit of a satire ultimately depends on whether what it's parodying or making fun of is picked on in a way that says something more, or if it's just dated topical humor, and likewise a good number of great works of serious art and subjects are parodied and lampooned but still remain popular and enjoyable in their original form. A good number of the greatest satires of all times would qualify as shallow parody judged against their targets.
Often times, satirists need a springboard to talk about a wider range of subjects, and using a common recognizable series of images and stories (familiar via Pop-Cultural Osmosis) is a pretty good starting point. Just because a work is a shallow parody of something doesn't mean it isn't funny, or that it's bad.
More egregious cases will often ignore elements that justify the more ridiculous aspects of the work or mock the original for things it doesn't even have.