more and more I've been interested in making a game that's supposed to be like a game from Japan but in the sense of a skewed interpretation of western culture, but not just a few mistakes really take it to the extreme. But anyway I'm trying to decide if I should really just wing it or seriously have some sort of approach to developing the game. so if somebody could suggest random movies/tv shows that I should base my image of America from. Even a single episode of a single tv show. Imagine I am someone from some random country who has had no other exposure to american culture! What show/etc. would create the most interesting interpretation of US in my mind

Edit: I will even consider working with a single television commercial

this is honestly supposed to be an apolitical goofy sort of game... or is it????

third video is pretty amazing so far though

I actually think Hideo Kojima has based his entire worldview off old John Carpenter films but still.

and finally i present a scene from David Lynch's 'Wild At Heart' which is basically america.flv:

grab a bunch of 80s sitcoms like diff'rent strokes or the facts of life

actually aside from 80s sitcoms, just use the brady bunch as a model for typical american families

actually I really really like the idea of a Brady Bunch-themed RPG universe. I basically love the premise of trying to give DEPTH to something that basically doesn't extend beyond the margins of the TV set/etc. this is why Barkley was awesome too besides all the jrpg poking fun at etc. etc. like basically SNES Genesis-era basketball game the whole game is just a SCREEN it's almost like making a game about Price is Right like the SET of price is right like you jump into the game with the skier guy and end up in this skier guy world that is really well developed and not just some dude from the 70's slapped together a cheap wood cutout of some mountain and guy on skis

somebody also has to make an unironic completely serious and deadpan Metal Gear fangame based on that weird story some guys made up for the instruction booklet because they didn't know a speck of Japanese

Edit: for people who never heard of this

Instruction manual

One aspect of the game which has affected people's perception of Snake's Revenge is the storyline as depicted by the game's instruction manual. At the time of its release, Konami of America/Ultra Games (the game's publisher) had a habit of not taking their games seriously. This was reflected by the humorous tone of their instruction manuals, which made several jokes and puns at the expense of the game and paid little or no respect toward the game designers' original intentions.

Snake's Revenge was no exception. In the manual, the main villain's name, which is actually kept a secret in the game until the end, is given as Higharolla Kockamamie, a play on Ayatollah Khomeini, and one of the main characters (Jennifer) is described as possibly being related to "Ginger from Gilligan's Island." None of these terms or jokes actually appear within the game itself.

Hahaha that's fantastic Ragnar.

But yeah I totally get what you mean about giving depth where there wasn't any.  I love shit like that.  There's a lot of things like that based on newspaper strips.  The Comics Curmudgeon is mostly making fun of newspaper comics, but by doing so he's almost created alternate universes of a lot of them by redefining the characters and the situations they're in.  I actually had a blog for a little while where I took Apartment 3-G strips and wrote narratives to go with them that turned it into a post-apocalyptic dystopian story.  Fuck, I should start that up again.

checking out that site now

wow comic writers are insane I like that one with Herb and Jamaal where he is saying something like women don't gossip that much and then Herb's wife is offended yeah what about guys they gossip too but he said the exact opposite and probably the punchline was written first but the lead-up to it makes no sense and this is why I have a hole in my brain now

THE ERA WHEN PEOPLE WORE LEISURE SUITS

also wtf at Beetle Bailey too lazy to look it up again but haha in what universe did that punchline make sense

I'm assuming you're trying to have a skewed view of America today and not from the 80's or 90's so...

Lady Gaga videos. To my knowledge no one else is insane enough to act/dress like that and she's popular in america.

And really bad current sitcoms like "Big Bang Theory" and "Two and a half men"

Yeah, I suppose. I just saw a lot of suggestions from the 80's and stuff and thought some newer stuff would also be helpful.