parodies more famous than the original

As Trihs points out, TMNT were at first a nearly line for line parody of Frank Miller’s Daredevil, where Daredevil became a ninja all of a sudden and Elektra made her debut. The Foot is a parody of The Hand, Splinter is a parody of Stick, and the ooze that mutated Splinter and the Turtles was, IIRC, the same ooze that gave Matt Murdock his radar sense.

Our Topeka Symphony has done two programs of classical music used as cartoon soundtrack material. They also had slides and clips of the cartoons themselves.

Dr. Strangelove was a reworking of a book called Red Alert. The book was serious, rather than satirical, so it could be said that the film was a parody of its source.

One could call Dr. Strangelove a twisted version of Red Alert. Peter George, who wrote Red Alert under a pen name, is credited for the novelization. I’d almost consider Dr. Strangelove a MSTIEing of Red Alert more than a parody of the genre. Though there are parody elements in there - Turgidson has a book called “Equivalent Cities in Megadeaths” which is a nod to Fail Safe.

The Pope and Michelangelo sketch from “Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl” is one of my favorite examples of this type. It parodies a 1573 incident involving the painter Veronese. His actual solution was to rename the painting, just as suggested in the sketch. Outside of art students, how many people have even heard of Veronese? I only know the connection because I Googled the sketch and read someone else’s mention of it.

It was indeed Australia.

Blazing Saddles is of course a parody of Destry Rides Again