Hostile Show Takeover
A Hostile Show Takeover is an episode where a (lead) character is some
WALUIGI HATES THIS.
|
WAAAAAAAAAA!
Waluigi interrupts whatever stupid thing you are reading to bring you something better!
What is this about? This website used to be a page about the Hostile Show Takeover trope, but Waluigi didn't like the stupid guy who wrote the page, so now it's ALL WALUIGI, ALL THE TIME!
Um, okay. That was... odd.
Now that Waluigi (or rather his extra life) is being escorted out by security, how about we go on as if nothing had ever happened?
Ahem.
A Hostile Show Takeover is an episode where a (lead) character is somehow indisposed, and the rest of the cast scrambles to oust that character, taking over the role or pitching their own concept in a quickly created audition.
This probably requires the characters to actually be aware they're in a show, at least for that episode, but comes up in cartoons frequently.
Anime and Manga
- In the last Mai-Otome Omake, the characters were literally fighting over who should have the lead role in the show's direct-to-video sequel.
- An issue of Urusei Yatsura had Ataru resigning, and the other characters were argued over who would be the new main character. He was just resigning from his class presidency, though.
- The Team Rocket trio has expressed a desire to become the star of the Pokémon anime. In the form of karaoke.
- Literary variation: the afterwords of The Slayers light novels usually feature self-proclaimed "Author's Official Spokeswoman" L-sama attempting to knock out the author and take his place.
- A variant occurs in an early episode of Gintama: at the beginning of the episode, Gintoki is asleep, and the sponsors get frustrated and forego the opening to cut to the filming of a Shinsengumi mockumentary (tying into the A-plot of Kondou's obsessive love for Otae.) Ten minutes later, when Gintoki is approached by Shinpachi, he goes off into a rant about being left out for so long and then scrambles to retain his position as main character when Shinpachi mentions the Shinsengumi would replace him if he didn't shape up.
- In the manga recently, played for slightly more drama in the Kintama arc.
- A recent Naruto Shippuden Omake had Shikamaru trying to get the series re-named Shikamaru Shippuden, on the logic that the titular character wasn't scheduled to do anything significant for a while.
- In the Violinist of Hameln manga, the supporting characters planned to take over the series after Hamel's violin broke - a violinist without a violin can't possibly be the main character...
- The last episode of Sailor Moon season two. Each of the other four senshi mused on why they should replace Usagi as the main character, during which old clips of that character get shown.
- Ninin ga Shinobuden has Sasuke taking over the first half of episode 11. Or so it seems.
- In Sonic X, Eggman repeatedly expresses his desire to become the protagonist of the show throughout the first two seasons. In fact due to story events and the ending theme changing it looked like he almost succeeded at one point.
- Hora at first thinks that he is the main character, and once he realizes that he isn't, becomes determined to take the title from Jiron, so he can get his happy ending. Hilarity Ensues as it tends to on this show.
- In one chapter of Mirumo de Pon!, Murumo is quick to declare the manga's end after his older brother gets konked on the head and the start of a new manga ("Lovely Fairy Murumo de Pon!"), despite Mirumo's protests that he isn't dead.
- The supporting cast of Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo, Don Patch in particular, attempt this frequently, though considering Bo Bobo is an Invincible Hero and they are collectively The Chew Toy their attempts don't exactly succeed.
- In Part 3 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, after ZZ thinks he killed Jotaro, he proclaims the end of the 3rd JoJo series and tries to declare himself the new main character. Jotaro pops out of the ground unharmed and needless to say, quite pissed.
- In Dragon Ball Kai Captain Ginyu does this in one of the "On the Next..." segments after body swapping with Goku. He says the show will now be Ginyu Force Kai and that he will do the narration from now on.
- Dragon Ball Abridged does a similar joke, with the Ginyu Force taking over the opening for the duration of their appearance on the show.
- The Cowboy Bebop preview for "Jupiter Jazz part II" (following the cliffhanger ending for "Jupiter Jazz part I") contains Ed proclaiming that the rest of the crew all died and that the show will now be called "Cowgirl Ed" before the other Not Quite Dead crew members butt inn and silence her. The voiceover, of course, does not match the actual pictures of the preview at all.
- In Medaka Box, it turns out Ajimu's entire plan was to goad Zenkichi into performing one of these against Medaka.
- In Hoshin Engi, Taikoubou's rationale for fighting Zhou's spy boils down to worrying that this is about to be enacted on him. Though as is usual for him, Taikoubou has an ulterior motive - to get the spy on his side, which first requires her to start thinking more positively of his side. He does this by setting up a festival with their fight as the centerpiece, which has some of Taikoubou's allies cheering her on.
Comic Books
- In the Brazilian Mega Man comic Novas Aventuras de Mega Man, one writer introducted an Original Character Villain Sue named Princess, whom he ultimately intended to kill off the rest of the cast (yes, including the canonical cast of the Mega Man series) and become the new main character. When the people making the comic learned of his plans, the writer was promptly fired and Princess was shoved through a dimensional portal, never to be seen again.
- In 2000 AD, Tharg had to go deal with a crisis, and so the comic was taken over by The Men in Black from Vector 13 for about 10 issues.
- Shown on the cover of one issue of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. It was an anthology issue, so in a way it was being "taken over," but ...
- The Joker, due to his Medium Awareness, has on occasion directly addressed the reader and announced that he's taking over the narration.
Fan Works
- In the Bleach Fanfic Uninvited Guests, Aizen uses a machine to steal Ichigo's Plot Armor and give it to his side. And he endlessly lampshades everything he's doing.
- The ending of Naruto Veangance Revelaitons. Basically, the fic is about the adventures of an Author Avatar named Ronan, his sexual exploits among the female cast of Naruto (and his abuses toward them), and his rambling about various subjects that he hates, among them the author's stepbrother Benji. Just when the author finished the fic, Benji hijacked his stepbrother's Fanfiction.net account in order to get back at him, then wrote up his own ending involving a Mary Sue Hunter coming in to save the day and the Naruto cast rejecting and killing Ronan. The original author is now permanently locked out of his account, so the takeover ending is now final.
Literature
- In "Jack's Bean Problem" from The Stinky Cheese Man, the Giant decides not to follow the original Jack and the Beanstalk story. He kidnaps the narrator and insists on reading a story he wrote instead.
Live-Action TV
- Whenever Jon Stewart is temporarily unable to host The Daily Show, correspondents sit in for him. Once, Steve Carell got rather too attached to the job and Jon's first episode back was spent trying to keep Steve away from his desk.
- Then, during the 2008 election, the revelation that Obama was now The Man led black correspondents Larry Wilmore and Wyatt Cenac to briefly take over the The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Normal service was resumed by the commercial break.
- Subverted in a opening segment in 2011 parodying congressman Weiner's press conference, when Stewart announced his resignation and left John Oliver in charge. When Oliver had taken over the anchor's desk following the intro sequence Stewart immediately chased him off, declaring it had been just a bit piece.
- A recent episode of The Colbert Report featured a cold open where Stephen Colbert has a nightmare that Steve Carell had hijacked his show and renamed it The Carell Corral. Colbert promptly bursts into his own nightmare and steals the show back from him.
- On an episode of The Drew Carey Show, Cheers actor John Ratzenberger and the Blue Man Group attempt to kill Drew and take over the show. Yep.
- Dramatic in-show example: During the Dominion War on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Vic Fontaine's program in the holosuites hit a periodic trigger that caused Vic's nightclub to be taken over by the mob. His fans on the space station manage to take time out of the war to help him out—because if they don't, his character will be permanently erased.
- The pigs take over an episode of The Muppet Show. Miss Piggy is torn between her love for Kermit the Frog and her desire to be a bigger star.
- When Glenda Jackson guest-starred on The Muppet Show she led a literal pirate takeover, deposing Kermit and turning the theater into a ship.
- Yet another Muppet Show example: Beaker once got himself inadvertently cloned and spent the rest of the episode interrupting various sketches and generally took over the show by the end.
- In the successor series, Muppets Tonight, the lobsters from the "Rock Lobster" sketch take over the show. The day is saved by the guest star, Pierce Brosnan, who goes undercover as... James Prawn. In a gigantic lobster costume.
- Clarissa's little brother Ferguson does this in an episode of Clarissa Explains It All.
- In Monty Python's Flying Circus, the Icelandic Saga program is taken over by the Town of Malden.
- The two documentary filmmakers fighting over the microphone and trying to finish their report. The documentaries start going to war to get the screen time.
- In an episode of SCTV, the Soviet Union blocked the SCTV satellite to broadcast "CCCP-1" programming instead (including such shows as "Tibor's Tractor," "Uposcrabblenyk" and "What Fits Into Russia?". Ironically, CCCP-1 actually gets better ratings than SCTV!
- In the Danish series, DukseDrengen, the Mega Corp Everywhere takes an interest in the show and starts sponsoring it in exchange for more and more product placement within the show, which makes the writers actively charge the plot or put it to a complete hold in order to squeeze in more and more Now Buy the Merchandise moments, much to the titular character's confusion. Everywhere eventually buys out the entire production, right in the middle of DukseDrengen's showdown with his Arch Enemy, Fedtegreven, and turns his classmate, Donny Dumkoph, into the main character, because he is more marketable.
- Way back in the early days of the YTV network, PJ Phil shared his host segment with a crew of puppets called Grogs. Warren, the surly green Grog, broadcast "pirate" transmissions declaring to the audience his intent to take over the network and turn it into "WTV." When it actually happened, it was short-lived (I think it lasted all of one segment before Phil restored order).
- Actually, the whole WTV thing was a whole day. It took place on New Years Day, when YTV would suspend its regular daily programming and show their most popular shows, one after another. The WTV segment was the framing sequence for these shows, which showcased Warren's takeover of the network and the eventual efforts by Phil and his costars to stop him.
- The finale of That's My Bush! was about a dastardly plot by Dick Cheney to kick George W. Bush out and take over. Cue the edited "That's My Dick!" theme song...
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Superstar" starts with the show already having been taken over by Jonathan, a minor character at the time. All the supporting characters act as if he had always been the most important person in their life. The intro changes to show images of him instead of Buffy. They eventually discovers that it was all caused by a spell
Music
- The band Second Coming was originally an industrial rock band fronted and managed by Jesse Holt that released an album called L.O.V.E.vil. When Holt fired bassist Yanni Bacolas, the drummer and rhythm guitarist left and went with Bacolas, who then registered "Second Coming" under his own name, hijacking the band name from Holt. They changed their sound to Post-Grunge and rarely, if ever spoke about L.O.V.E.vil. To add insult to injury, they changed the credits on the album to exclude any of Holt's contributions and remove him from the band's history.
Magazines
- Games Workshop's White Dwarf magazine once ran an issue that was taken over by the 'Black Goblin'.
- - which is also the name of their online "magazine".
Newspaper Comics
- This was done on Cow and Boy. An insane prospector from the fiction comic "Prospecting" took over their comic. He'll attack anyone who gets to close to his 'claim', so they are too afraid to do anything for a few weeks.
Boy: What right to we have to take away his happiness? |
- Doonesbury parodied a Soviet coup by having various minor characters try to oust the title character from the strip.
- Then there was the week where the strip was bought out by Rupert Murdoch...
- Bloom County had a story arc where the main characters staged a walk-out in mid-punchline, and the management responded by trying to fill space first with "staff members" telling jokes, and then by hiring scabs to take the character's place.
- One Pearls Before Swine comic strip series had Rat place chains and locks on the panels and forcing creator Stephan Pastis to obey his whims.
- He did it by uttering punchlines from The Great Big Book of Garfield untill he did, which drove Pastis insane and said would destroy Pearls.
Professional Wrestling
- WCW was notorious for this during the nWo storyline. The nWo took over WCW Monday Nitro several times (once with an elaborate new set and new CGI opening sequence), had their own Pay-Per-View (nWo Souled Out) where the WCW wrestlers' entrance music was replaced with taunts of "loser", and had a regular 10-minute segment on WCW Saturday Night that was almost a parody of pro wrestling.
- At one point Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff took over The Tonight Show, leading to a Tag Team match on Pay Per View between Hogan and Bischoff vs Diamond Dallas Page and Jay Leno. The more insane pairing won.
- DX has done this a number of times, in both its first and its last incarnations. Usually, it involves playing around with the production truck, dictating ridiculous match stipulations, and generally causing mayhem.
- As of late, the Nexus seem to be going this way as well.
Theater
- The Veggie Tales live show, "Sing Yourself Silly" starts off as a Top Ten Silly Song Countdown, until Archibald arrives and announces that the show should be all lesson songs instead. Hearing the human host complaining about Archie changing the show, Jimmy and Jerry mistakenly believe that they can change the show, too, and decide to make it an 80's song countdown. Eventually they all agree to share the show, making it a mix of silly songs, lesson songs, and even 80's songs.
- In the PDQ Bach opera The Abduction of Figaro, a key prop goes missing in the final act. Mute character Schlepperello announces that he has it and will not produce it unless they let him perform an aria. Since they can't finish the opera without the missing prop, the director lets the mute sing.
Video Games, Visual Novels
- In Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, various secondary characters will propose to the Dark Assembly that they should be the main character. Actually passing one of these proposals results in a Nonstandard Game Over.
- In addition, Laharl, the main character of the first game, complains that he only loses to the player characters (as an optional boss) because he wasn't the main character anymore. His whining is...whiny enough that Adell (The current main character) takes pity on him and allows Laharl to resume being the main character...for one minute. Laharl decides to use that minute in an anime sequence. Hilarity ensues.
- This returns in #3.
- On the other side, Etna hates having her "On the Next..." sequences interrupted, and tends to react violently when it does happen.
- Flonne's preview for Episode 7 (Drop Dead, Etna) is a Magical Girl parody that gets her shot.
- In addition, Laharl, the main character of the first game, complains that he only loses to the player characters (as an optional boss) because he wasn't the main character anymore. His whining is...whiny enough that Adell (The current main character) takes pity on him and allows Laharl to resume being the main character...for one minute. Laharl decides to use that minute in an anime sequence. Hilarity ensues.
Etna: Flonne, whatcha doin'...? |
- Gordon regularly interrupts Etna's preview for Episode 10, and each of her lines is cut off with fewer words before he starts talking.
Gordon: Look forward to my adventures! *hearty laugh* |
- Finally, Flonne's Q&A Time starts off with a letter about some bully stealing the writer's fun. Flonne gives a (surprisingly) violent suggestion on how to fix the problem, and Etna pops on stage to agree with her. Guess who wrote the letter?
- In Soul Nomad and The World Eaters, defeating an early Hopeless Boss Fight causes Asagi, a recurring character in Nippon Ichi games, to enter the gameworld, fresh from her apprenticeship under Zetta in Makai Kingdom. Asagi demands the protagonist and Gig hand over their spot as main character to her, and since neither are meta-savvy and have no comprehension of what she's talking about, Hilarity (as well as a Bonus Boss fight) Ensues.
- This is pretty much Asagi's schtick in the games she appears in. She'll often try and fail to take the role of Protagonist via You Kill It, You Bought It. She first appeared in Makai Kingdom as "The Protagonist from the next Game". Sadly, her game (supposedly Makai Wars) was never released, so she goes from game to game bemoaning her fate and trying to take the lead role. Taken to hilarious extremes in Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? where she tries to emulate the Prinnies and repeatedly challenges them.
- This culminates in a boss battle with her in a Prinny costume, which she apparently put a bomb in for no reason, that explodes, killing her. She comes back as a Black Prinny with a white scarf wondering if now she can get her own game. Which she sorta does. The sequel gives us Asagi Wars, where Prinny Asagi is the playable charcter and all the bosses are alternate versions of Asagi. So she apparently succeeded, Sorta.
- She appears in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice and accuses Mao of stealing her game from her and fights him. When she loses she bursts into tears thinking her game is lost forever until Mao recruits her. Its is later revealed Baal apperntly was the real culprit. He escapes before giving it or anything else he took back however.
- She also shows up in the secret ending to Disgaea Infinite where she complains to Amazombie for losing her package (Ticktock) which is apparently the key to getting her own game. She then randomly hops on a dragon and shouts that Makai Wars will one day get it's epic release
- This is pretty much Asagi's schtick in the games she appears in. She'll often try and fail to take the role of Protagonist via You Kill It, You Bought It. She first appeared in Makai Kingdom as "The Protagonist from the next Game". Sadly, her game (supposedly Makai Wars) was never released, so she goes from game to game bemoaning her fate and trying to take the lead role. Taken to hilarious extremes in Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? where she tries to emulate the Prinnies and repeatedly challenges them.
- Speaking of Makai Kingdom, the Bonus Boss battle against Etna opens with one of her "On the Next..." segments from Disgaea in which she goes on to narrate about how she'll steal Zetta's title and become the main character. Naturally, winning the battle allows Zetta to throw this right back at her as he goes on to narrate his own "On the Next..." segment which is a several-minute long rant about how awesome he is.
- In a bonus video in Metal Gear Solid 3, Raiden decides to go back in time and kill Big Boss so that Snake would never be cloned and therefore Raiden would end up being the main character for the series. However, whenever he time travelled, he always ended up in a sticky situation during the game, ended up getting hurt instead of another character, and ended up creating a time paradox due to changing the future (to which the Colonel keeps telling him not to mess with the future over his com - despite the communication coming from 30 years in the future). Eventually, he becomes desperate enough to actually try and kill Snake back in the original Metal Gear 2 game for the MSX2, but is shot by Big Boss himself in the attempt. In the end, he figures it's just more trouble than it's worth.
- Before his pair of spinoff series rose in popularity, Wario from the Super Mario Bros. series made a habit of trying to claim things that belonged to Mario. In the Super Famicom game Mario's Super Picross, he manages to take over the entire game and title screen at one point. This tendency is also referenced in the opening sequence of Mario Golf 64, where he mutters that the game should have been named after him, and Mario Party 2, where he is the first to dispute Mario Land's name.
- Certain bits and pieces of the board Waluigi's Island in Mario Party 3 imply that the board used to belong to Luigi. The board also shares certain traits with Luigi's Engine Room from the original Mario Party. Not so much a Hostile Show Takeover as a Hostile Level Takeover, but it still fits.
- Pretty much deconstructed in Umineko no Naku Koro ni, starting with the fifth arc. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view), Battler was not incapacitated, and the arc ends with him taking back the plot from Erika and Bern, although there are still two or three arcs to go.
- In Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, a Straw Feminist martial artist shows up, beats up the narrator, and declares that she is taking over, dissatisfied with the sexism and poor production values (but just as displeased with the player's choices), and is apparently wanted in several states for doing this. Later, the narrator returns and guns her down, regaining control.
- In the Dept. Heaven series, Yggdra first appeared in Knights in The Nightmare as a Continuity Porn gag, narrating the tutorials and making loads of disparaging remarks about how she makes a better protagonist than Maria. As of the rerelease of the game, she has become its third heroine; she's even appeared in the concept art for the next game. Amusingly, Yggdra's own protagonist status in the Ancardia games is slowly but surely being usurped by Yggdra Union's Hero Antagonist, Gulcasa.
- In one of Tiger Dojos in Fate/stay night, Ilya tries to take over the dojo ON A TANK!
Web Original
- In Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series, Bakura wants to usurp the main character spot so he may turn the show into his own: Zorc And Pals.
♪ The blood of the innocent shall flow without end / His name is Zorc and he's destroying the world! ♫ |
- Tea, Tristan and Bakura's ill fated attempts to get some screen time in episode 16: Fanservice. They seem to have accepted their roles as ineffectual minor characters now though.
- Noah and the Big Five had the entire show cancelled and taken over by 4Kids.
- Count Vile does this in the April Fool's episode of Press Start Adventures.
- Even the titular Irate Gamer got his show taken over by his Evil Twin for his review of Order Up for Wii. The Special Edition Title is just the Irate Gamer NEO intro played backwards.
- The Subtitles took over the Teletraan3 channel, abusing everybody in its path. Poor Cobra Commander TFW was even Driven to Suicide.
- Demyx Time Episode
EightAxel had this. And then Marluxia and Larxene come in and take the show from Axel. - A variant was an April Fools' Day joke where the hosts of Unskippable tried to give a Zero Punctuation-style review and ended up getting tossed out by Yahtzee. Yahtzee had shown up on Unskippable a couple days earlier, and one of the hosts had already declared that he could do Yahtzee's job as well as he could.
- The Game AntiThinker, Bob's boorish, hyper-masculine douchebag Evil Twin, has taken over The Game Overthinker as of episode 43.
- When Chester A. Bum was about to review Rango, he was called offscreen and punched by Raoul Puke, who said he should review the movie as "he was in it" (referencing a brief cameo by "Hunter S. Thompson").
- After Ghost ragequit for about the 100th time after people celebrated Herman Cain's dropout from the presidental race in their own unique way, much to his dismay, his Engineer, well, The Engineer, effectively took over for a time. When Ghost came back, he was furious, yelling that he was "the talent" and not him.
- Lloyd the cat once took over Oreo the dog's Twitter.
Web Comics
- Waluigi is back! The page is funny again. [dead link]
- In Errant Story, Sara and Bani's Errant Commentary section has twice been taken over by Poe's other filler characters, Naga and Fran. Both occasions ended with Naga and Fran being killed (and Sara made Naga into a pair of snakeskin shoes).
- In L's Empire, the cast of the creators' previous comics holds one of the authors hostage since their comic hasn't been updated in 2 years (it still hasn't as of yet.)
- Femmegasm: "Okay you feebs, move over! Fizzy's here from now on!"
- Variation in Homestuck. Doc Scratch suddenly takes over narration duties twice, the second time even changing the website to a pool theme. This counts because the narrator is author Andrew Hussie, who literally bursts through the fifth wall to take the story back, knocking out Scratch in the process. Sucker.
- Then Doc Scratch returns as Lord English, and promptly shoots Andrew down.
- Happens in Homestar Runner in this episode of Marzipan's Answering Machine; Strong Sad decides to exercise one of his favorite perks of house-sitting and records over Marzipan's outgoing message no less than 3 times.
- In the web-Manhwa Tower of God, Rachel does this at the end of the first season.
Western Animation
- In Jim Henson's Dog City, a Muppet series about the creation of an animated series, one episode involved Eliot Shag, the artist, coming down with flu. The other Muppet characters decided to finish the story for him, each coming up with a version starring the secondary character Shag had modeled on them.
- In The Muppet Show, the pigs forcibly take over the show in one episode. Instead, they put on their own programming, complete with Kermit the Pig.
- Another Muppet example: an episode of Muppets Tonight in which various secondary characters tried to stand in for Miss Piggy.
- In-universe example: in The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob frames his employer, Krusty the Clown, for robbery, so that he can take over his show. In a subversion, Bob's show is shown to be much better than Krusty's random slapstick.
- Done in the Darkwing Duck episode "Comic Book Capers." Not the show, precisely, but a comic book based on it. His massive ego disagreeing with his depiction, Darkwing sets out to write it himself. The rest of the cast keeps interrupting, finding it, and adding their own bits. Not exactly starring themselves, but putting their own spin on events.
- A later episode has a TV executive trying to downgrade Darkwing's role and make Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Green Thumb Bushroot star of his own series.
- After thinking he blew up Rocky and Bullwinkle, Boris Badenov calls for a spotlight and claims the show for himself. He finds out that our heroes survived by tuning into the show on a TV within the show itself.
- In the Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode "Baffler Meal", a prototypical version of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force try to take over Space Ghost's talk show. It truly gets out of hand once they start running the "hunger imagery". Space Ghost does manage to reassert himself in the end, at the cost of changing classic rock forever (imagine Thomas Jefferson and his backing band singing a reworded version of Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" and you'll get the picture...maybe).
- In the Garfield and Friends episode, "Change of Mind", it plays out like a "Garfield's Tales of Scary Stuff", except Nermal is the central focus and does the narration. In the end, things return to normal for Nermal, but now Jon is doing the narration and is the focus. Of course, Garfield himself doesn't take kindly to any of this.
- This was also done in the earlier episode "The Genuine Article", featuring a cat named Gabriel who resembles Garfield a little too closely, including most of his characterization. In a dream sequence, Garfield fears that he'll end up stealing his girl, his show, and worst of all, his merchandising.
- In "Lightspeed", an episode of Teen Titans, the opening sequence is abruptly cut 3/4 of the way through by the H.I.V.E. Five, who say something along the lines of how it's their show now. Indeed, the focus is on them and the Titans don't appear at all, save for Kid Flash, who has no direct connection with them.
- No connection is explicitly mentioned, anyway. Why do you THINK he was hanging out in the city while the Titans were gone?
- Inverted in Chowder, where Chowder becomes insanely smart to the degree where he realizes he's in a cartoon and decides that because he's so smart, he should be on a talk show instead.
- In fact, this is later briefly referenced by Chowder (who has been returned to normal) in another episode. This may be a Lampshade Hanging done by the writers, considering how ridiculous that episode was. And that's saying a lot.
- On one Veggie Tales video, Archibald Asparagus took over the show. He presented the segments from a Masterpiece Theater-style armchair in front of a fireplace. The two halves were Omelet and Gilbert and Sullivan's "lost musical," "Lyle The Kindly Viking," separated in the middle by "
SillyClassy Songs With Larry".- Another time, two nerdy squash named Jimmy and Jerry Gourd took over the show. (This was not a hostile takeover; they were trying to be helpful to Bob, who had been on vacation.) Their episode, titled "The Englishman Who Went Up the Hill and Came Down with All the Bananas," teemed of Stylistic Suck, leading to a mild scolding from Bob. However, after Bob and Larry presented a traditional story, Bob relented and let them sing the song at the end.
- This is the entire premise of Disney's House of Villains, a Halloween special edition of House of Mouse in which Jafar, Captain Hook, Ursula, Maleficent, and other famous Disney villains conduct a hostile takeover of the titular House of Mouse. (Surprisingly, this is in no way connected to Kingdom Hearts, although the game may have been the inspiration.)
- In the episode "A Pig's Story" of Dave the Barbarian, The Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy does this by capturing the narrator with magical handcuffs.
- In Batman the Brave And The Bold the first clue to something being up is Joker appearing instead of Batman in the teaser. Followed by Bad Guys winning and ending with an Earthshattering Kaboom. The intro then starts, Joker has now taken over the episode and renamed the show Joker: The Vile and the Villainous! Complete with HAHAHAs sprayed over everything. The main episode even plays up Batman as the villain, while Joker teams up with his idol The Weeper to get him back in the game.
- Dexter's Laboratory has Mandark electrocuting Dexter instead of Dee Dee in the intro with the title sign reading Mandark's Laboratory complete with all the shorts centered around Mandark. However, Dexter does get back at him near the end of the show when he electrocutes Mandark much like the intro.
- In Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (a show where there's a fourth wall between the characters and the TV, but not between them and the video game console) there is an episode where Carmen's henchman Sara Bellum tries to take over, and starts to relish the thought of renaming the game Where in the World is Sarah Bellum?.
Real Life
- The popular interpretation of the January 2010 Tonight Show debacle. Many of Conan O'Brien's fans saw the whole event as Jay Leno stealing The Tonight Show back from Conan after his own 10:00pm show bombed in Prime Time.
Oh no... not again...
WALUIGI TIME!