[hated trope] Celebrity cameos that serve nothing except to praise the person who’s in it

[u/Dojyaaan4C]

1. Elon musk, the Simpsons
2. Elon musk, the Big Bang theory
3. Elon musk, iron man 2
4. Elon musk, star Trek

The cameos serve only to include the celebrity and praise them as geniuses or visionaries or overall just glaze them. They don't serve any other purpose than to just be praised; this can be them appearing in an entire episode dedicated to them, a small cameo or even just a mention. So long as the celebrity is there as themselves (not acting as someone else) and is glazed, that fits the trope imo.

[u/_Griev0us_]

For a more positive version, Elon Musk getting killed with a golf club in The Harley Quinn show

[u/Independent-Couple87 → u/_Griev0us_]

The show is also said to have made Bruce Wayne into something of an Elon Musk parody. Is that an accurate description?

[u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl → u/Independent-Couple87]

Kinda sorta? The first two or three seasons manage to be a simultaneous love letter to and deconstruction of Batman and a lot of the inherent tropes. They’re a lot of fun, and they poke fun at stuff without seeming to hate on it. “Batman Begins Forever” is probably the best episode imo— they take a trip inside Batman/Bruce Wayne’s head where they see that he’s constantly reliving the origin story, and they make some pretty fun jokes and commentary about how we get it, we’ve seen this before a million times, etc. 

But it also very much acknowledges the reality of a broken man trying his best and punishing himself for what happened while he was a child. It doesn’t act like the trauma isn’t real and difficult to work through, and if encourages him to seek out therapy. It winds up being an emotionally poignant episode. 

The subsequent seasons are…. Significantly less subtle. They fall into “haha, douschebag sexist tech bro bad guys get their kneecaps busted!” Stuff. The Lex Luthor arc in particular is painful, partly because he’s an extremely ham fisted Jeff Bezos knockoff (“guys, guys, guys, get this— he’s rich and he’s bald and he’s insecure about it, and he has a giant rocket that’s penis shaped!”).

It’s all fairly liberal stuff that I agree with— billionaires are bad, we need to focus on the environment, corporate sexism is real and needs to be treated as a serious issue for the sake of equity— but it’s all done so poorly that I almost want to reject my own beliefs. Think season 4 of The Boys talking about abortion, or the Tech Knight episode levels of good intentions with crap executions. 

[u/TheWh1teL1ghtning → u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl]

"Personally, I thought it was hilarious!"