May the Farce Be with You



Many shows have a few references to Star Wars. It's a popular film series, so the majority of the audience is likely to understand it. However, some shows go a step further, and have an entire episode that revolves around references to Star Wars, Luke, I Am Your Father scenes, Big NOOOOOOOs, and thinly-veiled Captain Ersatzes of Darth Vader. The focal or point-of-view character usually plays the part of Luke Skywalker, since episodes frequently take most references from primarily A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (primarily the former).

The episode need not be a parody, and in many cases is an Homage, and sometimes a full Whole-Plot Reference.

Compare Charlie and the Chocolate Parody.

Anime and Manga

 * Crayon Shin-chan did this.
 * The English dub added more in-jokes.
 * The little known series Dotto! Koni-chan has an awesome parody of the three movies.
 * The opening of To Love Ru is blatant. And then Subverted: TIE fighters don't have missiles. And they don't hit the heroes.

Comics

 * "May The Farce Be With You", a Donald Duck / Mickey Mouse comic.
 * Zé Carioca of all people also had one of these.
 * Monica's Gang had Star Warp (in the original Portuguese, Coelhada nas Estrelas something like "Star Rabbit-beating"), followed 11 years later by an Empire parody, O Feio Contra-Ataca (The Ugly Strikes Back), and 2 years later by O Retorno de Jedito (Return of the Jedito).
 * Spider-Man had an Spidey Super Story featuring Doctor Doom as the obvious Vader, involving a giant metal planet. For some reason.

Film

 * Spaceballs is built around this.
 * Most films in the View Askewniverse have Star Wars references thanks to Kevin Smith's geeky obsessions. Most evident in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back which has the title and features a lightsaber duel with Mark Hamill at its climax ("Don't fuck with the Jedi master, son!"), complete with his hand being cut off and him remarking "not again." The same film has a Carrie Fisher cameo, though her scene has no Star Wars references.
 * There's a scene in Reign of Fire where some of the survivors in a Post Apocalyptic world with little left in the way of entertainment act out Star Wars to entertain the kids.
 * The Ur Example and probably the Trope Maker as well would be Ernie Fosselius's 1977 short, Hardware Wars.

Literature

 * A book in the children's series Space Brat spoofed this ("Planet of the Dips"). Among other things, there is a Yoda-like hermit in a swamp with a similar-sounding name, and his advice to the main character is "Use the farce, Blork!"

Live Action Television

 * An episode of That '70s Show set when A New Hope is first in theaters. Eric worries about losing Donna to another guy, resulting in a dream sequence that puts the cast in Star Wars. The best part is Red as Obi-Wan: "Jedi Knight? More like Jedi dumbass."
 * As a result it became one of Eric defining gags.
 * The dodgeball episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide includes Cookie joining The Dark Side and gaining a roboticized voice and heavy breathing from his dodge ball face shield, an Image Freeze echoing the end of the master-vs.apprentice fight in A New Hope, and a dodgeball called The Force, among others.
 * Spaced also featured numerous shot-for-shot parodies of moments in the Star Wars movies. They were particularly cutting about the prequel trilogy—but ironically, because they had been so complementary about the original movies, they were granted the rights to use original music, etc in their parodies of the trilogies.
 * The Muppet Show got in on the act when Mark Hamill was a guest on the show. He showed up as himself and Luke, with R2D2, C3PO and Chewbacca along for the ride, while Piggy played Leia and Gonzo played Vader.
 * The 1977 revival of Laugh-In ended with the tagline "May the Farce be with you."

Newspaper Comics
"Jason: Wait, you mean that you were a Star Wars fan before I was? Dad: Search your feelings, you know this to be true. Jason: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
 * FoxTrot had an arc where Jason sent a script to George Lucas that had him inserted into the series as Luke's Marty Stu younger brother. A later FoxTrot arc had Jason stuck inside his Darth Vader helmet until his dad rescued him. When Jason marveled at how his father was able to open the helmet, his dad commented that he had that problem with his Vader helmet during the original trilogy.


 * Bloom County once had an extended dream sequence that parodied Star Wars, with Binkley as Luke Skywalker and other cast members playing various Star Wars characters. Notably, this sequence parodied academic discussions of Star Wars more than the films themselves. Darth Vader was a pompous film scholar who decried the Star Wars films as "intellectual Jell-O" fit only for the slow-minded masses. Binkley (as Luke) responds by slicing him in two with a lightsaber, and quipping "Jedi Knights aren't fond of critics."
 * Even better, the very next comic has George Lucas telling Binkley that they have six more films, and should get to them by 1998. In the collected edition, Berkeley Breathed remarks "I was one year off."

Radio

 * Lo Zoo di 105 has Merde Stellari, "Star Shits".

Video Games

 * One module for the Game Maker Megazeux was entitled "Oh No, Not Another Star Wars Parody!"
 * The entire Lego Star Wars series of video games could be seen as an officially licensed Star Wars parody.
 * The Space Quest series has a number of Star Wars references, including a desert planet reminiscent of Tatooine which you crash your Escape Pod on after your ship is captured by aliens, a defective R2-like droid, a Bow Tie fighter from the Cologne Wars on the garbage freighter in the third game, Imperial Probe Droid-like sentry bots, a Roger, I am Your Son revelation, Obi-wan and Darth Vader dueling in the back ground, et. al. The box for SQ 4 even says "May the farce be with you!".

Web Comics

 * User Friendly did an arc "a long time ago, in another incarnation" parodying A New Hope, with the Dust Puppy in the Luke role and the Crud Puppy in the Vader role. The Dust Puppy, however, takes a backseat to Eric S. Raymond ("May the Open Source be with you!") and Lan Solaris, cocky pilot of the Millennium Bug.
 * Diary of a Crazed Mimbanite
 * Worse's initial setting is a very Star Wars-esque universe.
 * Darths and Droids is based on the premise of a group of tabletop gamers playing out the Star Wars prequels as a campaign in a generic science fiction game system, in a world where the actual Star Wars movies never existed.
 * Blue Milk Special is a direct parody of the original trilogy. It is currently only up to Empire Strikes Back.

Western Animation
"Homer... use... the forks! Use the forks!"
 * Robot Chicken has had three Star Wars Specials.
 * The Fairly Odd Parents had an episode that combined the original trilogy reference with allusions to Attack of the Clones when Timmy wishes for a copy machine that makes things real. The Abra-Catastrophe special also had a limited example in the opening dream sequence. The show is littered with Star Wars references: another one was when Timmy was trying to win the "Dimmy Awards." One of the scenes he filmed was a parody of the scene where Skywalker was trying to blow up the Deathstar. Butch Hartman is a huge Star Wars fan. The Wishology trilogy even had the Cantina scene and Vicky dressing up as Leah.
 * Family Guy did Family Guy Presents Laugh It Up Fuzzball. For the entire original trilogy.
 * With a Take That to the Prequel Trilogy at the end, where Peter breezily dismisses them with "Eh, I think The Cleveland Show is doing them."
 * Done in an episode of Muppet Babies.
 * The final episode of Pinky and The Brain was a Star Wars parody featuring the cast of Animaniacs, the show that it spun off from.
 * Tiny Toon Adventures did this in its first regular episode in syndication. It was later brought into one of the SNES games.
 * Codename: Kids Next Door had one episode revolving around it. There was a parody of the Darth Vader fight on a catwalk and they even parodied "Use the Force" with "Use the soup." Another episode stole the trench run from A New Hope, and another episode had a parody of the Death Star scene in Episode 4. On a gigantic cake, no less. The episode's climax was a parody of the Super Star Destroyer's destruction - it really cut a slice into Father's plans.
 * The School Bus Imperial Walkers and the Sled Snowspeeders in a giant Hoth/Snow Day battle.
 * Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends combined it with a superhero spoof—the villain turned Bloo into a Vader copy and made him fight Mac on a catwalk with a dramatic "unmasking".
 * The Venture Brothers loves throwing in Star Wars references, but the second season episode "Love-Bheits" really takes it over the top and almost becomes nothing but a Star Wars parody episode. Nobody told the Baron that Dean in his Leia costume was a trap, though.
 * The Super Mario Bros. Super Show did one of these parodies, actually called 'Star Koopa'. It actually had Bowser as Darth Vader, the other characters as other Star Wars characters and 'Lightplungers'.
 * "May the Stars shine down on you..."
 * The Chipmunks Go to the Movies, in which each episode was a parody of a well-known film, never actually did a Star Wars episode, but there was a few seconds of Star Wars in the title sequence, with Alvin as Luke, Simon as C3PO, Theodore as R2-D2, and David as Darth Vader.
 * The "Mayored to the Mob" episode of The Simpsons, thanks to Adam Westing guest voice Mark Hamill, who spends about half the episode trying to convince everyone he is not Luke before giving in and playing along with a Star Wars adaptation of Guys and Dolls. It has the number "Luke Be a Jedi Tonight". Need one say more?


 * In The Powerpuff Girls episode "Boogey Nights", the Boogey Man launches a giant disco ball to eclipse the sun so that his fellow nightmare creatures can party in the daytime as well and terrorize humanity forever. The Powerpuff Girls fly out to the disco ball in a dead-on parody of the attack on the Death Star. In the end, Buttercup flies out of the sun like the Millennium Falcon, winging two demons on Bubbles' tail with her heat vision, allowing Bubbles to fire a heat-vision blast that destroys the Death Star disco ball.
 * Futurama has been known to do this from time to time, the first reference being Hanukkah Zombie's preferred mode of transportation a TIE Fighter whose wings are shaped like dreidels. Bonus points in that Hanukkah Zombie is voiced by Mark Hamill.
 * Retarded Animal Babies episode 13: "Abandon all Hope."