10 TV Shows That Made Fun Of Their Fans

Supernatural can be a crazily meta show, and in one episode from Season 4, they actually have the characters discover their own fandom. 

Well, kind of. There's an episode where Sam and Dean find out an author has written a series of books which are identical to their lives. So when the show references the fans of these books, the writers are actually referencing Supernatural fans. 

In this scene, Sam and Dean discover that people write slash fiction pairing them together as a romantic couple despite the fact that they're related. Yeah, that's a real and significant faction of the Supernatural fandom. "They do know we’re brothers, right," Dean asks. "Doesn't seem to matter," Sam responds. 

And then there's an episode where Sam and Dean actually go to a Supernatural convention. There's another reference to Sam and Dean shipping when there's a panel at the convention called "The Homoerotic Subtext of Supernatural." Then there's a Q&A between the creator and the fans, and the writers make fun of both overzealous fans and the show itself. One fan asks why Sam and Dean always have their weapon knocked away by the bad guy during fights, and the showrunner doesn't really have an answer.

With these episodes, the show lovingly references its own fans while also telling them that shipping the two brothers together isn't really what they intended.