The Real World? - Parodies, Derivatives, and References

Parodies, Derivatives, and References

• The show was satirized in the October 2, 1993 episode of the sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live. The episode, which was hosted by Shannen Doherty, featured a sketch depicting a Real World cast patterned after the Los Angeles cast, and poked fun at the discussions of racism, bigotry, and political differences that served as a recurring theme that season. Another SNL parody of The Real World came in a 1996 episode hosted by John Goodman in which Bob Dole (Norm Macdonald) is thrown out of the house.
• The 1994 movie Reality Bites, starring Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke, focuses on a group of twentysomethings whose video diaries are misappropriated for a Real World-style documentary series. This fictional documentary series, as well as the title of the movie itself, closely parodies and satirizes The Real World format.
• A fifth season episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 called "Unreal World" depicted David Silver using a character named Tuck as the subject of a class video project. When Tuck refuses to participate, the rest of the cast pretend to be Tuck and his roommates for the project. Another character named Beth is also used in the project.
• In an episode of the animated comedy Pinky and the Brain, Pinky and the Brain join the cast of a show called Real Life hosted by TV personality Eisenhower for the network MTTV in order to broadcast the a cappella voice of Rush Limbaugh in order to take over the world.
• A satirical TV movie called The Lost Season parodied The Real World. It depicted a season of the show that supposedly took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was abandoned because its participants were kidnapped.
• The reality show The Surreal Life is structured similarly to The Real World, except that the housemates, who live together for ten days, are celebrities. The show's original name was "The Surreal World."
• "Swept Away – A Very Special Episode", a Season 11 episode of the crime drama Law & Order that premiered February 28, 2001, featured a plot involving the investigation into the murder of a housemate on a reality show akin to The Real World called Deal With It. An episode of the crime drama Diagnosis Murder also featured a plot involving a murder committed during the filming such a show.
• Dave Chappelle lampooned what he perceived as the targeting of minority cast members for criticism or ejection on the show on his Comedy Central sketch comedy show, Chappelle's Show, with a sketch entitled "The Mad Real World", portraying, with hyperbole, the results of what would happen if one white person were to cohabitate with a collection of crazy black people.
• The Comedy Central series Drawn Together is an animated reality show parody that borrows much of its format and conventions from The Real World, but whose cast is populated by animated cartoon archetypes.
• The music video for the Eminem track, "Without Me", contains scenes which parody The Real World, with appearances by New Orleans castmate Julie Stoffer, Boston castmate Syrus Yarbrough, and San Francisco castmate David "Puck" Rainey.
• The 1999 romantic comedy She's All That features Matthew Lillard playing Brock Hudson, an ex-Real World cast member kicked out of the house for being obnoxious to his fellow castmates.
• In "Text, Lies & Videotape", a fifth-season episode of the television series Dawson's Creek, Audrey (Busy Philipps) is speaking with Joey (Katie Holmes) about recording her audition tape for the fictional The Real World: Ibiza season. In a sixth season episode, "The Importance of Not Being Too Earnest", some college students speculate whether Joey sent an e-mail to the whole campus (by accident) in an attempt to get attention or because she was on The Real World.
• In "The Route of All Evil", a third-season episode of the animated television series Futurama, the characters watch an episode of The Real World: The Sun. An incredulous Leela remarks on how much a house on the Sun would cost, a reference to the upscale houses in which that the casts on The Real World live.
• The WB television series Mission Hill based an entire episode on The Real World, in which the show's protagonist joins the cast and attempts to destroy The Real World from the inside by exposing it as an elaborate hoax with microphones and hidden cameras telling each person how to act and behave on camera.
• The TV show Muppets Tonight featured a skit called The Real World: Muppets. Most segments of it were only shown in United Kingdom. It showed Rizzo the Rat, Bobo the Bear, Clifford, Bill the Bubble Guy, and a goth girl named Darci.
• In "Morality Bites," a second-season episode of the television series Charmed, the sisters travel to 2009, and on the television can be heard "Coming up, The Real World: On The Moon!"
• The computer game Afterlife features a Hell punishment called "The Unreal World", which features the description "This is the true story, of 5000 SOULs, picked to live in a house, and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting damned."
• In "My Hero", a 2001 episode of the TV series Scrubs, a cutaway gag shows a number of the characters introducing themselves in the style of The Real World's opening sequence.
• In the April 10, 2005 episode of the stop motion animated television series Robot Chicken entitled "The Deep End," Aquaman is one of seven housemates in the fictional parody of The Real World entitled The Real World: Metropolis.
• Dutch TV producer Erik Latour claims that the ideas for The Real World were directly derived from his television show Nummer 28, which aired in 1991 on Dutch television.
• The Nickelodeon children's comedy show All That parodied The Real World in its last season with "The Unreal World", in which nearly all of the housemates were undead beings, such as vampires, zombies, ghosts, and a floating head.
• Video artist Eileen Maxson's short film Tape 5925: Amy Goodrow is set up as an audition tape for The Real World, a familiar component of the series' casting specials and season openers. Maxson portrays the title character, a sensitive and awkward young woman whose main hobby is paper craft, and reveals a surprising sexual encounter between her teenage self and a teacher. The resulting confession lands on the desk of a jaded MTV employee, who fast-forwards through the details of her depressing story. The video was named one of the "sweet 16" experimental film and video works of 2003 by Village Voice media critic Ed Halter.
• In "More Like Stanksgiving", the fourth episode of the 3rd season of the TV series Happy Endings, the characters watch clips from an episode of The Real World: Sacramento, on which they themselves were previously cast members. The fictional season was said to have not aired due to one of the cast members burning down the house.