Times when you didn't get references, parodies, homages, etc

[SmashTV]

Late 90s/early 2000s slacker sitcom Spaced is essentially a geek/pop culture treasure trove of references - the first episode contains references to Scooby Doo, Return of the Jedi and HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy alone.

While I was able to identify most of them, some of the more subtle ones - a spinning number plate for Back to the Future, for example - needed signposting for me. I'd seen the film countless times, but didn't make the connection.

[BJ Sturgeon]

Nov 9, 2018 22:16:21 GMT -5 H-Virus said:

Nov 9, 2018 20:31:13 GMT -5 wildojinx said:

Also, to me, the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes satirizing the Twilight Zone were just funny segments to me until I found out they were parodying that show. Heck, I was surprised when I first saw It's a Good Life and found out that Billy Mumy's character turned a guy into a Jack-in-the-box in the actual episode.

Yeah, Simpsons and Futurama were both full of references that I didn't know about until much later.

Same here. For example:
Homer knocks over a deer statue.
Homer: "D'Oh!"
Lisa: "A deer!"
Marge: "A female deer!"

I (like basically everyone else in Austria) had never seen "The Sound of Music" and only heard the song this scene references last year and made the connection then.

[Cela]

Nov 25, 2018 7:05:37 GMT -5 mrtuesday said:

Nov 25, 2018 6:08:04 GMT -5 Spiderf 4 said:

So basically that made "Scary Movie" some sort of parody of a parody?

"Scary Movie" was actually Scream's original title before it was changed. So it made sense for the parody to take it for itself.

I have annoying memories of telling my grade school classmates that Scream was a satire, and them responding "NUH UH DUMBASS! SCARY MOVIE WAS THE SATIRE!"

Lots of them ended up doing meth.

[Chainsaw]

I'm surprised that there are still MST3K jokes that I find out the source for long after watching the episodes, like that the "He hit big Jake!" running gag is actually a line from Sidehackers.

[ERON]

Another Looney Tunes example - until I saw Of Mice and Men as an adult, I never got all the "I done a bad thing, George" gags in Looney Tunes and other vintage cartoons.

[Deleted]

Al Snow’s “Head” gimmick. Took me way too long to realize it was a sexual innuendo.