Ask Lemmy

the onion

The Onion is way better than real life, especially currently.

Amish paradise. I find the song better than the original(s)

Idiocracy is at least more entertaining

As an animation nerd I gotta mention Shrek. As a parody of "Disney princess movies" it killed the entire genre dead.

The only time Disney tried to play the tropes somewhat straight again was the Princess and the Frog, and THAT was a major flop (though racism probably also played a part in that).

Since then Disney only made remakes or titles like Frozen that spend 70% of their runtime mugging at themselves and poking fun at their own tropes (... While still circling back to them anyway and failing to make any point or commentary)

On a less "this made a major cultural impact" note and more of a "this personally completely altered my entire sense of humour and replaced the original in my heart" -- SnapCube's Realtime Fandub Games Sonic Adventure 2

Oh oh ohohoh! Just remembered JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Very much a manga that was poking fun at contemporaries like Fist of the North Star... And while it didn't outlive or outdo them per se, it definitely gained a life of its own, continuing to this day and actually being quite influential in its own right.

FourStar Dragon Ball abridged parody

Pretty much everything from Weird Al.

Thagomizer, it’s the end of stegosaurus. There was no scientific name for the spiked end, the paleontology side decided the Farside comic called it Thagomizer so let’s use that

The venture Bros

Blazing Saddles. It killed the western genre for a long time because of how well it parodied them

Blur - Song 2 was intended as a parody of American rock and is laden with nonsense lyrics. It's their most known song in America by a wide margin and might even be their most known song globally.

Woohoo

Galaxy Quest!

Hot Fuzz is the best buddy cop movie I've ever seen.

people keep saying Idiocracy but i wouldnt consider it a parody, but a satire, and also i cant help but complain that the film makes more of an accidental pro-eugenics statement than anything about authoritarian politics

Idiocracy started as a parody, and is now becoming a reality.

Bugs Bunny far surpassed It Happened One Night. His manner of speaking, saying “doc,” and his obsession with carrots are a direct parody of Clark Gable’s character from that movie, but modern audiences don’t realize he’s a parody at all and instead assume the carrot thing it based on rabbits’ real dietary preferences.

Airplane parodying the airliner movies like Zero Hour

Dr Strangelove parodying atomic terror movies like Fail Safe

Deadpool It was a parody of DCs Deathstroke, right down to the guy's name Slade/Wade.

Weird Al's White And Nerdy, so much better than Ridin Dirty.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is better than Hamlet. Sure, it had the benefit of an extra couple of centuries of progress in art, but I think it still counts.

For my wife Spaceballs is the original and Star Wars is the spoof.

But more seriously, too many people didn't register that Scream was a parody. That way it managed to surpass older slashers.

r/TheDonald. If I remember right, it started as a meme sub before he actually ran, then it was overtaken by actual supporters.

I think the Documentary Now! episode, "Juan Likes Rice and Chicken" is better than Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Yugi Oh The Abridged Series

Naked Gun.

Austin Powers.

Team America: World Police

Airplane! lapped Zero Hour! so hard most people don't know about the existence of the latter

The best parodies are humorous takes that treat the source material with repect.

Shaun of the Dead

Galaxy Quest

Army of Darkness (person out of time becomes a leader against evil)

Might not be exactly what you're asking for, but if you've seen ever seen Rocky and Bullwinkle, you'll know the villain "Boris Badenov," but you might not know his name is a pun of a historical figure, "Boris Godunov". Old cartoons like that are great because they're full of these super obscure references and jokes that completely fly past you until years later when you encounter something in a history class and suddenly burst out laughing. Another example I remember from that show is "The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam," a reference to "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam."

Cunk - parodying Attenborough and cosmos style docs

Starship troopers - more of an active ignorance of source material

Happy Gilmore

Spaceballs.

Spinal Tap. The reactions to it are telling enough: allegedly Steven Tyler didn’t think it was funny, and the Edge just wept.

On Cinema has better story telling and character development than most of Hollywood.