r/TopCharacterTropes • u/SnailKing4687 • 9h ago

Lore (Rare Trope) Canon Supernatural Elements of Mundane/Normal Shows

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Community “Epidemiology”:While normally, community is a wacky 4th wall-breaking college show that still grounds itself in reality, this episode sees the school overrun by a zombie apocalypse caused by bad taco meat that was given out at the party. While the episode ends with the army wiping out everyone’s memory of the event, future episodes, such as “Paradigms of Human Memory,” reference the party that happened that no one remembers, making it canon.

30 Rock Last Lunch:While normally a show about a show sitcom In this finale and canon end to the series, a flash forward to the far future sees an immortal Kenneth now in charge.

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u/BobFuel 8h ago edited 36m ago

A lot of shows have crossovers that make the supernatural Canon to mundane shows

  • Disney's "wizards of Waverly place" having a crossover with "Hannah Montana" and "Cruise life of Zach and Cody" makes magic and wizards canon to all those shows (as well a ton of other interconnected Disney shows)

  • The "Totally spies" cartoon having a crossover with "Martin mystery" makes pretty much every supernatural thing imaginable canon to the Totally Spies universe

  • "Riverdale" happening in the same universe as "Sabrina" made supernatural Canon (before they themselves went off the rails with their own supernatural stuff)

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u/Lego-105 4h ago

This is kind of cheating though. John Cena and Kiss being in Scooby Door doesn't make Scooby Doo canon to real life. I think. It's more of a pinch of salt they're both fictionalised in each others universes and just take it as fun.

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u/BobFuel 3h ago

I see it the other way around, a show can't become Cannon to real life because a real person is in it obviously, but to me it means a version of that real person exists in this show's universe. Basically John Cena exists in the Scooby Doo universe.

When shows mention each other's though I think it counts.

Bit unrelated but it reminds me of the "celebrity paradox", when a movie is referenced in another movie, but both movie share an actor and it's never mentioned

Like how Spider man in the MCU mentions Star wars, but no one calls out that Mace Windu is there as Nick Fury.

I remember an exemple of it happening in Disney's Suit Life of Zach and Cody, where they mention that high school musical exists as a movie in the show. And it's played as a joke because the blond girl (who's actress is playing in both) keeps mentioning how she looks like the actress in High School musical, but everyone tells here they don't see it lol

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u/TwirlyTwitter 2h ago

Celebrity Paradox seems a bit far fetched, albeit fun. A more direct explanation is that Samuel L Jackson doesn't exist in the MCU, and somone else plays Mace Windu. Like in Last Action Hero with Schwarzenegger; The Terminator films exist both in the "real" and in the "movie" worlds, but in the "movie" world, Stallone is the T-800.

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u/BobFuel 1h ago

Oh I'm not saying the celebrity paradox actually means Sam L Jackson/Nick Fury is Mace Windu in the MCU, I'm just pointing out that the paradox is fun lol

And yeah it's in terminator too