Examples: Itchy & Scratchy from The Simpsons, The Scary Door from Futurama, or The Grand Inquisitor from Dostoevsky.
30 Rock has quite a few good ones:
- M.I.L.F Island
- Bitch Hunter
- TGS
- The satirized version of NBC in the show (lots of ‘biting the hand’ humor)
Can’t forget The Rural Juror
Apparently I will forget you, Rural Juror. 😆 But I’m still glad I met you.
Celebrity Homonym
OMG I would love for that to be a real show. It would have to be hosted by the actor who did it in the show; he was perfect.
“It’s always the other one. Let me see the card.”
“No! Never!”
Weirdly (or not, perhaps) MILF Island was turned into a real show (sort of) not once but twice. On The Cougar a 40-year-old woman was seeking a partner among male contestants who were all in their 20s. On the rather more disturbing MILF Manor a group of women between the ages of 40-60 stay in a villa seeking to pair up with a pool of younger bachelors, which turns out to be made entirely of the women’s sons. Wikipedia says in season 2 the ex-husbands were also added to the dating pool so the sons had to compete against their dads for the divorced moms.
My god. That… that’s enough reality tv, thank you
John Oliver sometimes runs random out of context clips of MILF Manor and I’m not sure actually watching them in context would make them any less ridiculous.
Loved MILF Manor. As weird as it sounds, MILF Manor season 2 was actually pretty touching at times. Season 1 was cringe overload. Both were great
I only saw a promo for it once and was pretty grossed-out, but had to at least look up the Wikipedia. I don’t think I was the target audience, other than it reminding me of 30 Rock.
It’s absolutely ridiculous garbage. But if you are like me and into that shit, it’s great.
The lore books in The Elder Scrolls series, hands-down.
There is an entire universe of conflicting knowledge, personal bias, and unreliable narrators that leave Tamriel’s history feeling very real, and very open to interpretation. The fun of it is piecing together the truth somewhere in the middle. But I’ll die on the hill that the Arcturian Heresy is absolute horseshit written by a madman, and comparable to the scribbles of a paranoid schizophrenic on an anti-vax forum. Anyone who references that volume in regards to Tiber Septim and the forming of the empire is an impressionable dweeb.
This is not exactly what you’re asking for (media inside media), but it’s really close in spirit (nested narratives), and I really like it: a book written in Portuguese in the XIX century, called Noite na Taverna (Night in the Tavern).
The book has an overarching story of friends telling each other stories in a tavern, over booze; with all those nested stories being about love, despair, and death (it has a strong gothic vibe).
And, as each character tells the others a story, there’s always that fishy smell that the story might be actually bullshit; and other characters do raise some doubts about its in-universe veracity (like Bertram does to Solfieri). And you, as the reader, do the same - but in no moment you question the veracity of the overarching story, and you feel like you’re inside the tavern alongside the drunkards.
So it’s a lot like the author is toying with your suspension of disbelief - redirecting it from the overarching story to the nested stories, and as you doubt the later you get even more immersed into the former.
If I must use an example of media within media, then my choice would be “The Book” within Orwell’s 1984. I think that it’s a great piece because it shows Orwell’s views on politics and society, while still serving narrative and worldbuilding purpose - for Winston it’s a material proof of the Inner Party’s bullshit, for O’Brien it’s a tool of the Inner Party to sniff out dissidence. (Note: 1984 is extremely misrepresented nowadays, I’m aware, but I still like it.)
Also, the appendix talks about ingsoc policies in the past tense. They lost.
I’ve never noticed this usage of the past tense in the appendix about Newspeak - you’re right, it does. And it’s also written in standard English, so interpreting it as written in a world after Oceania fell is viable.
And following this line of thought we could even interpret the main story as a narrative within another.
Another possibility is that the appendix is not written in-universe, and uses the past tense because it’s how people expect storytelling to be written in English, with Orwell speaking directly to the reader instead of Winston Smith.
It’s definitely not Winston, he died in the main story. I interpreted it as an unnamed historian writing about this years later. I don’t think Orwell would self-insert and write from an in universe perspective.
In the second hypothesis it wouldn’t be self-inserting; it’s more like the author explaining something to the readers, outside the story.
The Adventures of Captain Proton from Star Trek: Voyager!
Yes! Much better than Flotter anyway.
The lusty argonian maid
from morrowind :3 (and not skyrim >>:c)
Here’s a website about those kinds of fake shows
Delightful!!
deleted by creator
Tales of The Black Freighter in Watchmen. Comic in a comic.
Good Morning Glipglorp! From the Androids and Aliens podcast by the Glass Cannon Network. It was a random bit of world-building that the players latched on to and ran with and it turned into a whole episode.
The Princess Bride is one of my favorite examples of this, especially because the “story within the story” is the main story, which is unusual.
The Never Ending Story too.
I was so disappointed when that ended
I’m still watching it. What are you talking about?!
Also, there is a second and apparently a third?
Yeah, talk about false advertisement!
When I was a kid I absolutely loved movies with this format. It was like I was learning the story along with the characters on screen, and it just made it feel more real. Like the story was so old and with enough truth to it that they made a movie just about people learning about said story. It let you feel like the caring, kind old narrator was your adoptive grandpa, and he was revealing to you some ancient, fantastical part of our history. One that you could imagine really happened, even if the story had some exaggerations. Those opening sequences where they show a big old, leather bound book opening up to the first chapter (e.g. The Sword in the Stone)? HOOK IT TO MY VEINS
This is a literary device called a “bookend narrative.” If you want more stories like that, there’s your search term.
Surprised that no one has mentioned Vegemorphs from PBS’s Arthur yet.
Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff from Homestuck. Although it actually predates Homestuck and was retroactively converted into media-within-media, does that still count?
All the ads in Robocop and Starship Troopers really
The Mr. Frog show in Smiling Friends.
Tool Time in Home Improvement
Yeaaaaah
This was so impactful that I only recently realized the title of the actual TV show wasn’t “Tool Time”. People talked about a mysterious show called “Home Improvement” and I didn’t even suspect it was the one I watched with my parents all those years ago
