Story Within A Story - From Story Within A Story To Separate Story

From Story Within A Story To Separate Story

Occasionally a story within a story becomes such a popular element that the producer(s) decide to develop it autonomonously (completing it if it is incomplete) as a separate and distinct work. This is sometimes called a "spin-off".

In the fictional world of the Toy Story movies, Buzz Lightyear is an animated toy action figure, which was based on a fictitious cartoon series, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, which did not exist in the real world except for snippets seen within Toy Story. Later, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was produced in full in the real world, perhaps prompted by people who thought that the brief showing of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command in Toy Story was an embedded real-world advertisement.

Another notable example is the relationship between Genshiken, a manga series about popular culture, and Kujibiki Unbalance, a series in the Genshiken universe, which has spawned merchandise of its own, and is being remade into a series on its own.

On other occasions such spin-offs may be produced as a way of providing additional information on the fictional world for fans. A well-known example of this comes in the Harry Potter series of J. K. Rowling, where three such supplemental books have been produced, with the profits going to charity. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a textbook used by the main character, and Quidditch Through the Ages is a book from the library at his school. The Tales of Beedle the Bard provides an additional layer of fiction, the 'tales' being instructional stories told to children in the characters' world.

Perhaps the most unusual example of this was the fictitious author Kilgore Trout, who appears in the works of Kurt Vonnegut. In the world of those stories, Kilgore Trout has written a novel called Venus on the Half-Shell. In 1975 real-world author Philip José Farmer wrote a science-fiction novel called Venus on the Half-Shell, which he published under the name Kilgore Trout.

The movie Adaptation was presented as if it had been written by Charlie Kaufman and his fictitious brother Donald Kaufman. Both 'brothers' were nominated for an Oscar that year.

In Homestuck by Andrew Hussie, there is a comic within it called Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, created by one of the characters, Dave Strider. It was later adapted to its own ongoing series.

Sometimes such spin-offs are produced against the original creator's wishes. One example is that the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip (written by Bill Waterson) includes in its scenario a children's book Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooie, and Bill Waterson stated in The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book that he believed that Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooie should remain an undefined story, left to the reader's imagination; but someone not associated with the strip published Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooie in the real world.

At least one complete Captain Proton story has been written in the real world: Captain Proton: Defender of the Earth, a comic, by Dean Wesley Smith, who presumed that in the Star Trek universe, the holonovel Captain Proton was adapted from a supposed 1930's comic; and he set out to write and publish that comic in the real world, but as a text story. (Other fan fiction described as Captain Proton stories are Star Trek: Voyager stories whose action happens partly in Voyager's holodeck where the Captain Proton program is running.)