Made up TV Shows

[ThisAdamGuy]

One of my favorite things to do is make up TV shows for my characters to watch. It lets me throw some of my weirdest, most random ideas onto the page without having to justify them. On a whim, I had chatgpt throw together some pictures for a couple of shows from the Henry Rider books. What about you guys? Do your books have any fun, fake TV shows?

 

[Bartun]

Nice! My story takes place in medieval fantasy times so there's no TV, but there are some made-up books out there.

 

[MasterY001]

My Humans watch lots of TV. "The Real Housewives of Tri-Vegas," "Regisian Idols," "IBA (Interstellar Basketball Association) Network," "ESBL" (Entertainment and Sports Broadcasting Line), "CNN" (Confederate News Network. Yes, it was intentional)...

They also have movies like the "Captain Miracle" saga and "Astro Venture II: The Fury of Ali"

Most of these titles are just mentioned in passing, but they're all canon. Entertainment hasn't really evolved for them.

 

[Anonjohn20]

"The Daylight Zone"

It's a show where a bunch of surreal, whacky stuff happens only for it to end in the most mundane, anticlimactic way possible. An alternative title would be, "White Mirror".

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I think the only one I've named is also the title of the story (with the main character in the series played by the child of the main character in the novel; said child also writing intros to each "case file") - True Blue. An early draft mentioned a few other shows (based on either heroes of the first age - the 50s-70s - or on the other then-current, or 1990s, Omniverse characters; it was part of a shared world in a small writing/gaming group), but would have to be dropped or have too much exposition to explain in the current version.

I'm not even sure David and Malcolm even have a TV in their apartment (or if they do, it's in Malcolm's second room - and hooked up to his gaming battle board, which I keep forgetting he does have...). Liz and Carol do but don't have time to bother with it except rented movies (and the only one mentioned so far is Titanic - the actual James Cameron directed one). Audrey is a big fan of the Hallmark channels, all of them, and the Classic Movie channels.

Dane had mostly real-world stuff before his death. Oh, but the world settings in the universe he's shuffled off to are Tumbleweeds (Variant Wild West), Kingdoms of Damar (multiple medieval fantasy servers) and Cosmopolis (two sci-fi servers, one a lot like Shadowrun, the other more like Star Trek)

Jack mostly watches the news or the Game Show Network. May have some fun with that bit eventually but so far it hasn't come up.

Don't think Kelly ever turned on her TV (oh, unless Fez had her put on the news before her first flight as Sparrow), but has two, one huge one in her living room and one in her office; she mostly watches sports at a sports bar.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

All they got is the news.

 

[J.Morikami]

I just finished a chapter where the MC is sitting infront of a kiosk where for the first time he hears and sees a futuristic holo where she(the anhcor says news.). the scene turn out to be amazing and funy. ill definatly use the holo for future stuff.

 

[Macha]

 

[ShrimpShady]

No TV shows unfortunately, but my current WIP has a lot of fake media.

For example, 2 different Steely Dan tribute bands named Not Really Dan and Woody Dick.

And the protagonist used to make a superhero comic book back in highschool called "The Unremarkables", centering around folks with incredibly niche/useless powers forming a support group together called "The Unremarkables". One of them's a teenage boy who gains the power of psychometry after a pickleball accident, able to perceive the past all at once through every single sense, but especially smell because as it turns out, piss and shit were the most powerful smells throughout most of human civilization. The support group itself is led by a plumber with the ability to transmit thoughts and states of mind telepathically, but only while high, so the these superheroes mostly spend their time in the most efficient blunt rotation of all time.

 

[Garolymar]

Nice! My story takes place in medieval fantasy times so there's no TV, but there are some made-up books out there.

Sort of the same thing I got going on, there's an in universe book called The Strange and Wonderful, it's written by a phrenologist type character. It goes into all the racial quirks in the world but also it's just fun being fantasy racist.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Sort of the same thing I got going on, there's an in universe book called The Strange and Wonderful, it's written by a phrenologist type character. It goes into all the racial quirks in the world but also it's just fun being fantasy racist.

Ah yes - I'd have to comb through three disparate chapters but there were a bunch of made-up books in Between Worlds (a few of them parodies of actual D&D books, most just made up).

 

[Elmir_Arch-Ham_of_Omega]

I do, but I've yet to put it into writing and I plan to make all stories have these shows when applicable. In my current webnovel I've yet to get into flashbacks of the MC and other reincarnators' past lives so none of these shows have been mentioned yet.

• Capitan Pingaloca: Named after a character in a Cypress Hill skit. It's a "King of The Hill"-styled cartoon with the main character being a suburban white boy who thinks he's a reincarnated revolucionario. Talks in a fake accent but doesn't really know any Spanish, nor does he even live near the southern states. When something really irks him he gets atop a chair or cardboard box and goes into an impassioned speech with the tag line "THERE MUST BE A REVOLUCION!". The joke is that it's always something minor and inconsequential and while he does draw crowds who whoop and yell in agreement, their resulting action is always something he doesn't like.
  He keeps a cactus which he calls "El Jefe" which is an ordinary cactus in the shape of someone raising his fist and has a "leg" up on a pebble. Everyone treats El Jefe like it is animate and has something to say and is even seen driving cars or playing basketball (the cactus itself is out of sight). Each episode begins and ends with a live action segment featuring the mariachis "Los Tres Diablos" Lucio, Simon, Fernandez who talk and sing about the events of the show (think the Mr.T cartoon or the Cryptkeeper, or the end of every He-Man, She-Ra, and G.I. Joe episode), except for Fernandez who never speaks and just passionately plays a solo.
• Mugsy and Lloyd: a 1960's noir drama, reruns continue into the modern age for some reason. Most of the episode is being narrated in by Mugsy. Show revolves around the two on the run from the law and from the mob led by "The Don", a parody of Don Vito Corelone. Every new character is either going to betray Mugsy and Lloyd or the "The Don" and ends up getting shot. Always has Mugsy monologuing about his cynicism, nothing can be trusted, not even the dog, nor the weather. Every bad thing that happens to Mugsy always ends up in a monologue of how it'll betray you and to trust nothing. Not even "The Detective" that is trying to arrest Mugsy and Lloyd or "The Don" can trust any leads or witnesses. Has an anachronistic Chuck Mangione playing the horn. Played straight but is meant to comedic to us the viewers.
• The Fighter Mob: A movie series that's "balls-to-the-wall non-stop action" is literally nothing but an hour and half of guys beating each other up. No dialogue, just pure action from start to finish. Always involves a crazy guy driving a combine harvester chasing down several other doods.
• Heir of Wei Ming Chu: A series of kung-fu movies. The guy learns martial arts from a hermit who is rumored to be undefeated before retreating from society after finding no worthy challengers (Highly implied to be an immortal Lu Bu). The guy gets into fights for all the silliest reasons. Recurring line of enemies: "Heir of Wei Min Chu! My Kung-Fu...is better than yours!" while they guy's is "First-class teacher, first class student!" The abbots of the Shaolin monastery are jobbers that die in every movie to sell how strong the bad guy is and more often than not the HoWMC is often blamed with the recurring line "...you killed The Abbot!" Restaurant brawls all happen in the same place every movie with the proprietor getting more and more resigned to his fate.
  Not to be confused with...
• Hair by Wei Ming Chu: A modern drama of a hairdresser who wants nothing to do with with martial arts, but keeps getting dragged into it and is very good due to being drilled in the arts as a kid (as well as being a distant descendant of HoWMC). All his opponents are descendants of his ancestors' enemies who incidentally all have professions that have nothing to do with kung-fu. Has a jobber friend who incidentally was descended from a certain wayward abbot...
• Gigatech Robo: A Voltron-styled giant robot anime where the vehicles that form the giant robot are all jobbers that exist only to sell how much a threat the monster-of-the-week is. The crew keeps having to be reminded that they can combine into Gigatech Robo to defeat the enemy. The alien invaders are no less dumb either, there's the conquering prince forgetting that the Space Skype(tm) is left on and ends up leaking all his plans to the good guys. There's the bloodthirsty warhawk general who shouts all his lines and waves his sword and is too honorable for a sneak attack and always recommends a frontal assault, which results in the giant enemy robot being battered by the military by the time GTR arrives. There's the abusive foreman who due to lack of manpower always ends up with a janky robot (the prince thinks it meant to look crappy to intimidate the earthlings), and the scheming adviser who only cares about his position and actively sabotages the war effort just to keep his station.

 

[naosu]

well... all I can say is don't give up! Keep trying!

You can do comedy relief chapters maybe to switch things up with the audience maybe with these ideas?
I did a filler chapter in one of my stories as if one of the clown villains was doing a commercial for a youtube tv show. It got a few laughs.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

There are never tvs where my protagonists live, since it's fantasy. However, one of them will feature a world hop to Earth later on, so I might add them in for fun.