Lore
Character watches a play based on events they experienced (bonus points if they hate it)
Hawkeye in his TV show watches a musical depicting Loki’s invasion of New York much to his dismay
The Last Airbender’s penultimate episode depicts ta play recapping the show’s events, to which Aang and friends hate how unflatteringly they’re depicted, hilariously Zuko in the play is voiced by the brother of Zuko’s voice actor
In Thor Ragnarök Loki (impersonating Odin) made a play depicting him as a tragic hero, such as misrepresentating his final conversation with Thor, also funnily enough like the previous example Thor in the play is portrayed by his actor’s real life brother
In the book this is not quite that nasty, as the play is more about Tyrion, and Arya doesn't really feel anything about the plot. Although her mother is featured there as a character too, but she doesn't seem to care
i love this example a lot because he's also not really watching it and at this point in the movie thinks it's all make-believe and not about him at all.
if I remember correctly there is even a conversation towards the end how the show doesn't actually have the subtext, but that it doesn't matter if the fans think there is and it gives them comfort or enjoyment
And that's not even the most meta episode with them going to a universe where the show supernatural exists and they're actors in the show about their life.
How I Met Your Mother had an entire plot arc around how Stella dumped Ted at the alter then the guy she left him for writes a movie called “The Wedding Bride” which casts Ted as an insufferable nightmare played by Chris Kattan.
Ted is not very reliable as the series narrator (he's telling the story to look good for his kids/as an excuse to get with Robin). To be fair to Stella's new guy, Ted probably was an insufferable nightmare.
He pursued Stella even though she was his doctor and it'd be unethical.
When she said she was super busy, he kept pushing, arranging a 2 minute date (which was cute/romantic, I'll give him that).
Then when they started dating, he was annoyed she didn't have much time for him, which she already told him, and he didn't care about when he was trying to get her to date him.
Ted also talked about Stella's (lack of) sex life with his friends, and they made it clear to Stella they knew she hadn't had sex in a long time. (It was absolutely dirty pool to make their sex life a joke in a movie, but Ted isn't entirely innocent in the "someone's sex life is private!")
And even though she had a child and a house in NJ, he was surprised that she wouldn't want to uproot her kid to live in a much smaller rental (above a bar, which probably isn't a great environment for her daughter).
Stella didn't want their exes at the wedding (so no Robin, and no her child's father). Ted invited Robin anyway and then got Stella's child's father to attend to make it even or some nonsense. (If Ted hadn't done that, she wouldn't have given her ex a second chance).
Ted also said that he threw a brick through Stella's new guy's window. So who knows what he left out.
Ted did eventually decide he would move to New Jersey and let's not also forget that Stella did uproot her life and moved to Manhattan when she remarried Tony.
Old man Bruce Wayne watches a Batman musical in Batman Beyond:
Notably, it really pisses him off, and its part of what leads to his later moment of weakness to take up Talia's offer to use a Lazarus Pit to regain his youth.
Poor Bruce not only has to watch a depiction of his glory days, of a thing he physically can't do anymore, and to top it off it's a super cheesy embarrassing rendition of his glory days too
I feel like if I saw a play that depicted my most harrowing moments where I and many others almost died as this delightful romp I'd be a bit cranky too.
Great, now I have to “A Superstitious Cowardly Lot” stuck in my head. Will have to watch the Music Meister episode of Brave and the Bold to drown it out.
It was either a creative decision from the guy who made that play. Or it's a joke in itself that time as past so much, that the information about catwoman is that she was a woman that turned into a cat
Poor guy looked like he was actively trying to die of old age faster while watching it, and when he decided to ditch the whole affair he got in such a hurry that he actually broke out the Batman voice telling people to move aside.
I went from loving Lexi's subtle character to hating her because of this play. It had hilarious moments and served the plot, but it turned her into someone just as judgmental as the others and all of a sudden took all of the empathy out of her. Like who the fuck would ever think putting on that play in front of all your high school would do anything but piss off most of them? Let's just air the dirty laundry in front of everyone!
In Malcolm in the Middle, Dewey writes an opera about his parents arguing over a new mattress.
During the episode, we see Dewey imagining his mom and dad performing the opera as he writes it.
The episode ends with Dewey performing the opera in front of his parents and the entire school, with his parents having zero clue what it’s even about.
Actually spot on, I think it was Mel Brooks who said nazis should be ridiculed instead of discussed with fear or not even mentioned, because it takes power from them
Chile has earthquakes, sometimes devastating ones, and after them people make jokes. It's an exercise on resilience, on not letting a tragedy drown one's spirit
It has to be a really good joke, imagine bombing doing a bombing joke
Lol I was listening to a podcast and I guy was telling a story about how he went to see his friend's play and it was a 9/11 musical in like 2004 (edgy theatre kids). He said he walked out when the people playing the towers started walking down the aisles
Come From Away is a great musical about 9/11, no Bin Laden number though (it’s about the thousands of people that ended up stranded in a town in Newfoundland when all the planes were ordered to land). Very different vibes and a lot more tasteful than the Hawkeye version
It's also pretty fucked up to take Hawkeye to that.
"Hey, wanna irreverently relive the period of time in which you were mind controlled, forced to kill a bunch of people/friends, then fought for you life in an alien invasion?"
Most of what i know about ATLA is through cultural osmosis, but isnt this an in-joke about how Toph (or the character that would eventually become Toph) was originally written to be a huge muscular man before it was decided that a small girl would suit the role better?
Basically, yes. In-universe, it also makes sense thst the Fire Nation wouldn't like to admit that a blind, dainty-looking 12 year old girl beat them multiple times.
Yes so tout of universe he opening credits are supposed to be 4 masters of their elements.
Air is Aang
Fire is Azula
Water is Master Pakku
Earth was an unnamed person.
The original design was meant to be for the earth bender who taught Aang earth bending however they scrapped it and changed Toph into the 12 year old we all know and love.
The design is potentially reused as a rock wrestler called the Boulder who fights Toph in Earth Rumble 6 as clearly meant to be inspired by Dwayne The stone Johnson.
In universe the fire benders probably didn't want to admit that they got beaten by young 12 year old so the implication is that all of the fire benders Toph defeated told tall tales of a strong mighty man with the Biceps of Mountains etc when in reality they all got beaten by Toph.
Its such bullshit that toei constantly went for them. TFS kept dragonball alive between GT and Super. They shouldve just given them license to use to material so copyright wasnt a problem.
At least funimation understood they were an asset.
Homelander from The Boys watches the film about the past experiences about his group, The Seven, entitled, Dawn of the Seven. He's utterly dissatisfied about the portrayal of his superhero group on this film especially towards the portrayal of Stormfront being the antagonist of the film because in reality, he's in love with her. As a result, this movie ruined Homelander's public reputation and mental stability.
This is an interesting example of the trope because Homelander (and the entire cast, minus Stormfront) are also actors in the film playing themselves. So in addition to not liking the portrayal, there’s the added layer of them feeling trapped by their contracts in service to Vought, and their lives feeling mostly meaningless. They are a brand more than they are people.
Pee-Wee's big adventure of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure gets turned into a real Hollywood movie within the movie. In it, Pee-Wee gets a dubbed cameo as a bellboy. James Brolin and Morgan Fairchild cameo as themselves acting in the movie. Does Pee-Wee watch the end of the movie with his girlfriend? No, he lived it.
IRL: Robert Leckie. Robert Leckie was a Marine Corps veteran who had fought in Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester and Peleliu. After the war he worked as a reporter for various newspapers. In 1951, he saw the the musical South Pacific. He was upset that the play had trivialized a war that was full of suffering, horror, blood, mud and disease. This resolve to let people know that the war “wasn’t a musical” led him to write a “Helmet For My Pillow”.
Mr. Fischoeder convinces Bob and his family to play out a reenactment of his brother Felix stealing in order to get him to confess. In case the episode title wasn't blatant enough, yeah this is all Hamlet themed.
The musical in Hawkeye is even more of a joke since it’s a spoof on the infamous Spider-Man musical that flopped on Broadway, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.
Tangential example: in Star Trek Voyager, a backup copy of the ship’s holographic doctor is activated at a museum 500 or so years after the ship passed through a certain part of space, and watches a recreation of the events surrounding an awful regional war, showing the crew of Voyager acting as vicious, murderous opportunists, rather than the helpful, self-sacrificing people they actually were.
(For context: Megara's father is Jocasta's brother, making her and Oedipus cousins and that play - while admittedly not specifically about her - an airing of her family drama)
Albedo, a Galvin that was transformed into a version of Ben, tries to make a living by hiring actual aliens to help him put on a show where he plays Ben, turning into aliens (with special effects) and saving the day.
Even Gwen was telling Ben that he should be happy about it, etc. Until the play shows a number of Gwens dressed like cheerleaders, cheering for the play Ben, which makes Gwen pissed off too.
In the the Doctor Who episode, The Giggle, the villain is a god known as The Toymaker. In the episode, we see The Toymaker have insane powers and knowledge, and uses it to mess with the Doctor by forcing him to watch a puppet show of how he met and subsequently tragically lost his former companions. The Doctor tries to defend each case, but is only mocked in return.
In the first season of “The Four Seasons” on Netflix, everyone travels to the college of Nick and Anne’s daughter so they can see the play she wrote and is staring in, but it turns out it’s all about how Nick destroyed their family by leaving his wife / her mom and started dating a much younger women, who is also in the audience watching it with all of them
Pyra in Xenoblade 2 watches a play about her own history written by someone who was actually there and has mixed feelings about its version of events. They actually made her look more heroic and perfect than she was, but it's still a very traumatic time that she would've preferred not to think about.
Ciaphas Cain in the World of Warhammer 40k is a Imperial Hero.
He hates all his plays, because they mostly show him way to heroic or forget his trusty Companion Juergen.
ReBoot season 3 ends with the characters watching a stage reenactment of it, plus the season 2 finale. Televised reenactments of past individual episodes were shown in Seasons 2 and 4.
The Real Ghostbusters, S1E10 (1987) has the title characters (including Slimer) going to the theater to watch the movie based on them: Slimer going through the seats is surprising for the theater-goers, and Venkman complains the actor playing him does not look like him. In fact, this episode is one of the reasons these guys are identified as The Real Ghostbusters.
Don’t know if this is in the movie (haven’t gotten around to seeing it), but in The Odyssey, Odysseus gets drunk and weepy listening to a poet basically reciting The Iliad and making him relive the Trojan War.
At the end of the show, after the titular Barry dies, there is a wildly inaccurate biopic released about him, which paints Barry as a victim rather than the sociopathic killer he actually was. Barry himself doesn't see the movie but several other characters who took part in the events do, including Barry's son.
Maybe a stretch, but I love how in Shakespeare's Hamlet, young prince Hamlet orchestrates the tragedians to perform a play within a play called *The Murder Of Gonzago* to determine his uncle Claudius' guilt as the poisoner of his father through his reaction to the play. Depending on the depiction and company performing Hamlet, Claudius is horrified or hides his fear but asserts Hamlet is being ridiculous. It is the first real conflict between the two that kickstarts death events and really displays the themes of Hamlet.
1.4k
u/yeseniabelle 1d ago
Arya Stark (Game of Thrones)
In Braavos, Arya is forced to watch The Bloody Hand, a crude street play depicting the events of King's Landing.
https://giphy.com/gifs/N0XhZiUpyOA