Some time ago, I stumbled upon something referred to as "abridged" series. Basically, some people took different anime series, and redubbed their own lines for comedic purposes. They would exaggerate character traits, poke fun at plot points, and add some of their own jokes and running gags in for good measure.
Interestingly enough, Vegeta is more or less the same. He's still pretty sadistic and proud, but really, the only reason his traits get amplified is because all the other characters are so idiotic or insane that he really has no other rational response. Yeah, Vegeta's the straight man, and it works beautifully.
While there are quite a few out there, the one that really grabbed me was the abridged series for Dragonball Z. I've heard good things about Yu-gi-oh Abridged, but I haven't checked it out yet.
I enjoy the source material, but I also know that there's plenty to poke fun at, and this team (known online as TeamFourStar) does a good job with it.
Their iteration of Nappa as a psychopathic moronic manchild has become especially popular, to the point where the writers decided to have him reappear as a ghost simply so that they could keep their unique Vegeta/Nappa dynamic going after he was killed early on in the series. I also got a kick out of their interpretation of Guru. Almost every line he delivered had me busting up laughing. Somehow, the running gag where Raditz constantly gets dumped on for being a weakling never gets old. It hasn't been as apparent now that the series has moved on to the Frieza arc, but the writers still manage to get a jab in now and then.
While I think that you do need to be somewhat familiar with the source material to get all of the jokes that are made, there's enough beyond that that I think that even people unfamiliar with the show can get a good laugh out of it.
You can find all of TeamFourStar's videos here. I spent most of yesterday getting myself reacquainted with the series, even checking out their abridged versions of some of the movies, and had a blast.
Oh, speaking of the movies, so far, they've done a good job merging the movies into canon, impressive considering the movies almost went out of their way to make plot holes when taking the series itself into account. This series makes somewhat frequent references to Bojack, a space pirate antagonist, and Cooler, Frieza's older brother. Not only does it make for some nice jokes, but it makes for some nice continuity building.
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