The pillar explains the difference between the three. This page applies it — runs six real works through the test so the distinction stops being abstract. The test, in one question: what is it aimed at, and is there an argument under the joke?
"Weird Al" Yankovic — parody, not satire. He copies a song's form for the joy of the imitation. There's no argument about the original; he loves it. Pure parody.
**Airplane! — parody.* It sends up the conventions of the disaster-movie genre. Relentless and brilliant, but aimed at movies*, not at power or human folly. No real-world target, so it stops short of satire.
The Onion's news briefs — satire, built from parody. They copy the form of a wire-service report (the parody) to make an argument about how institutions actually behave (the satire). The form is borrowed; the point is the payload.
A sarcastic tweet about a politician — sarcasm, occasionally satire. A single deflating line is sarcasm: a tone, not a work. "Wow, great job" with an eye-roll stays sarcasm. It becomes satire only if it carries a developed argument, which one line rarely can.
**Dr. Strangelove — satire, top to bottom.** Parody of war-room procedure, exaggeration of Cold War logic, and a real argument about the insanity of mutually assured destruction. Every comic device serves the point.
**Get Out — satire wearing horror.** Not parody at all — it doesn't imitate a form to mock it. It uses genre to make an argument about race and liberal self-regard. The horror is the delivery; the critique is the cargo.
The pattern: *parody is about a form; sarcasm is a tone; satire is a work with an argument. Parody and sarcasm both live inside* satire as tools, which is why they get confused with it. The clean separation: take away the real-world argument. If what's left still works as comedy, you had parody or sarcasm. If what's left collapses — if the joke only mattered because of the point beneath it — you had satire.
One practical note: a thing can be more than one at once, and the proportions matter. Shrek is mostly parody with satirical edges. SNL is sketch comedy with satirical segments. The question isn't "which box," it's "which dominates, and is there a target the work actually wants to change your mind about."