10 TV Shows That MOCKED Their Rivals

Throughout its six season run, Netflix hit Bojack Horseman did an extraordinary job of balancing dark character drama with a frequently surreal, too-silly-for-words external world defined by puns, cartoon logic, and a gleeful willingness to parody everything and anything. Somehow, the series managed to make this apparently internally inconsistent tone work spectacularly, even when the show was parodying real life figures who could choose between voicing themselves in good humour, or seeing some woeful fate befall their cartoon self—farewell, Andrew Garfield, we hardly knew ye.

One of the show’s most ambitious parodies saw it recruit the star of another series centring around a mentally ill unreliable narrator whose attempts to do the right thing are often thwarted by his outsized ego, overwhelming insecurities, and paranoia.

Yes, it’s the Rami Malek vehicle Mr Robot, which was spoofed by Bojack when the show recruited its actual star, the Bohemian Rhapsody actor, to play a paranoid and self-important showrunner whose show centres around… a paranoid and self-important hero whose beloved partner transpires to be a mere figment of his imagination, just like Mr Robot’s first season twist revealed.