sometimes when I make a character, I purposely (heck even subconsciously sometime) base them off another character or concept/role and when I show em' to my friends they say “you basically made X but they have Y instead!” and it got me thinking of knock off characters in general cuz some of my favorite media are “knock offs” like yo kai watch (Pokémon), Heathcliff(Garfield) and dark cloud (legend of Zelda) on the surface theses properties appear to lack originality but it's in fact the opposite! their pretty unique and the only thing they share is a basic surface level comparison it's like saying apples and oranges are the exact same cuz their both fruit. which is a whole thing with originality and art in general and it's basically impossible to make something completely 100% original due to the nature of art basically being built upon the concepts and stories that have existed since humanity began.

Anyways tell me about your favorite “knock off” characters/media :oD

For me, there's the whole Jeanette/Irma debacle from the 80s. . . .



And I am thoroughly convinced that this was no coincidence. Granted, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but hear me out: the 80s Chipmunks cartoon show went through three different animation production companies, Ruby-Spears animated the first five seasons, DiC animated the last three seasons, and then Muramaki-Wolf-Swenson animated a side season right between . . . and they did so just as the 80s TMNT cartoon began. The very next year after MWS worked on The Chipmunks was when Irma was added to TMNT . . . my theory is that somebody at MWS - a character design, an animator, whoever, must have really taken a liking to Jeanette's design that they blatantly copied it to create Irma; the similarities between the two characters (brown hair pulled back into a bun, large pink glasses, baggy blue turtleneck sweater, purple skirt, etc.) just scream, “We wanted our own Jeanette,” while the obvious differences as well (Irma having square-framed glasses as opposed to Jeanette's round) also scream, “This character is not quite the same.” The most solid piece of evidence I have too is this: typically, the hair ribbon Jeanette wore around her bun was purple, but for whatever reason, it was yellow in those MWS episodes . . . and guess what color Irma's hair scrunchie has always been. Yep.

Thanks to Breadsword I discovered that Inspector Gadget is just Future Zenigata from Lupin the Third and I’ve been floored by this information ever since. (It makes SO much sense in hindsight!)

Probably my biggest one is that I really liked RahXephon (Evangelion knock-off) probably more than the real deal. Evangelion never spoke to me the way it did others so my experience with it was very surface-level. I got WAY into RahXephon though.
Like a neeeeeeerd.

Man…I know there’s some, but I can’t seem to think of ‘em at the moment! 😅

There is an Internet meme that shows how all the students from Miss Frizzle’s class on The Magic School Bus grow up to be the planeteers on Captain Planet.

Copy and paste characters in media? Look all the big popular webcomic hosting sites. They're full of them.

Once upon a time you had the tough private detective. A whole bunch of names but basically all the same. They copied each other so much it eventually got hard to tell where one started and the other left off.

Then there are the two Asian detectives Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto. Mr. Moto was decidedly not Charlie Chan though. Moto had his own tricks and didn't have the family that Chan did. (Number one son)

The whole superhero genre is all “knock off”. Strip away the characters' names and it's the same basic plot line again and again just like the hard boiled detective. In fact one iconic super hero IS a at his core a hard boiled detective but with a flying mammal fetish.

But of course at what point does the “knock off” character become a tribute? A satire and parody?

Most of the supers from the boys… and I'd say pretty much every one of them is better than the thing they knock off.

Maybe that's the super hero fatigue speaking…

dragonsong12 wrote:
Thanks to Breadsword I discovered that Inspector Gadget is just Future Zenigata from Lupin the Third and I’ve been floored by this information ever since. (It makes SO much sense in hindsight!)

Gadget is roughly based on Maxwell Smart from Get Smart and Inspector Clouseau I think, but his look is just a characterisation of the classic spy/detective trope that's been around since the 1920s, and Zenigata is based on that same trope. All they really share is a long face. ^_^

-The Trenchcoat and fedora wearing spy/detective/PI, usually wielding a cold 45 is developed out of noir crime fiction in the 20s and 30s. It was based on what people commonly wore at the time. The original characters were certainly veterans of WW1 and the trench coat would have been part of their uniform and the gun would be what they used in the war.
I think the British versions had a webly revolver.

Hence there are MANY variations of this character look from Carmen Sandiego, to Mike Hammer, Harvey Bullock, Phillip Marlow, Inspector Clouseau, Blabber Mouse, P.J. “LongArm” O'Malley from C.O.P.S., Secret Squirrel and so much more XD

Captain Marvel (now known as Shazam) VS Superman

Jupiter VS Zeus

Robocop VS Frankenstein's monster? Maybe… I dunno

Indiana Jones VS Alan Quartermaine.

Dracula VS Varney the Vampire

HeMan Vs Conan VS Hercules

Ozoneocean wrote:

dragonsong12 wrote:
Thanks to Breadsword I discovered that Inspector Gadget is just Future Zenigata from Lupin the Third and I’ve been floored by this information ever since. (It makes SO much sense in hindsight!)

Gadget is roughly based on Maxwell Smart from Get Smart and Inspector Clouseau I think, but his look is just a characterisation of the classic spy/detective trope that's been around since the 1920s, and Zenigata is based on that same trope. All they really share is a long face. ^_^

-The Trenchcoat and fedora wearing spy/detective/PI, usually wielding a cold 45 is developed out of noir crime fiction in the 20s and 30s. It was based on what people commonly wore at the time. The original characters were certainly veterans of WW1 and the trench coat would have been part of their uniform and the gun would be what they used in the war.
I think the British versions had a webly revolver.

Hence there are MANY variations of this character look from Carmen Sandiego, to Mike Hammer, Harvey Bullock, Phillip Marlow, Inspector Clouseau, Blabber Mouse, P.J. “LongArm” O'Malley from C.O.P.S., Secret Squirrel and so much more XD

No, you're right that these are other inspirations, but I meant that VERY literally. DiC made a pilot for a future version of Lupin the 3rd called “Lupin the 8th”. They couldn't secure the license for the franchise though, so it never got beyond that stage. When the pilot fell through, they took one of their future Zenigata concept designs and decided to build a show around him. There were other inspirations of course, and they're very apparent, but he is literally future Zenigata, and I adore that fact.

dragonsong12 wrote:
No, you're right that these are other inspirations, but I meant that VERY literally. DiC made a pilot for a future version of Lupin the 3rd called “Lupin the 8th”. They couldn't secure the license for the franchise though, so it never got beyond that stage. When the pilot fell through, they took one of their future Zenigata concept designs and decided to build a show around him. There were other inspirations of course, and they're very apparent, but he is literally future Zenigata, and I adore that fact.

OK, I wiki'd it XD

They say it combines Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, Get Smart, and The Six Million Dollar Man and other stuff.

The connection to Lupin was apparently that they had to recoup costs when their project for the the lupin spinoff was cancelled. :(
So yeah, they could have folded in character designs as part of that.

There were (are?) any number of stock characters that were all knock-offs of each other. They inhabited the formula world of pulp magazines, B-movies and serials. They were often adjusted and given a bit of characterization and carried over into various TV series.

Look at the Drunkduck radio plays for a classic selection with various parody shots on the archetypes. I envisioned the protagonist as the 1940s gumshoe private eye even down to putting chewing gum on his shoes. You can have a lot of fun with the archetypes. Another example from my own Attack of the Robofemoids were the names of the aliens. The knock off archetype is odd and exotic names and mine were Bob, Bill and Hank. When the sequel introduced female aliens they were Babs and Toots. They belonged to an alien subrace called Grey Guys and GALs. Totally generic which was part of their shtick. A tribute to how old time movies used generic “stock” characters from “central casting” Which was a running gag in.any number of old time spoofs of typical formula movies. The “old dark house” formula was spoofed so many times the original has gotten completely lost in the mix.

By the way, the CLASSIC spoofs of the whole trench coat private eye are Neil Simon's The Cheap Detective and Carl Reiner and Steve Martin's Dead Men don't Wear Plaid. There is also Murder by Death which nails all the series detectives from Charlie Chan to the Thin Man. The Clue movie owes a huge debt to these films and is something of a knock-off. The game itself was based on the “old dark house ” formula storyline.

I have plans to visit it myself after all I once played a Sherlock Holmes knock off/parody in a “old dark house” parody play back in high school.

I guess my favourite knock-off of all time would be the Duck Avenger who's basically a Batman/Superman knock-off with Donald Duck dawning the cape and the hi-techie gadgets. Those comics were actually really high class marvel stuff. Lookin' back at it now it really feels like an early sign of the destiny that Disney and Marvel would share together:P

Duck Avenger is an italian character and was originally the parody of a supervillain (Diabolik, whereas DA original name was Paperinick) but very fast the character shifted to superhero (mostly Batman) parody.

At some point in the 90s someone at Disney Italy tought it was a good idea to have a marvel-like comic targeted to a slightly older audience than the usual and rebooted the character, creating a serie for him on purpose.
There are still Duck Avenger stories set in the normal Disney continuity though, so there are two different Duck Avenger continuities.

marcorossi wrote:
Duck Avenger is an italian character and was originally the parody of a supervillain (Diabolik, whereas DA original name was Paperinick) but very fast the character shifted to superhero (mostly Batman) parody.

At some point in the 90s someone at Disney Italy tought it was a good idea to have a marvel-like comic targeted to a slightly older audience than the usual and rebooted the character, creating a serie for him on purpose.
There are still Duck Avenger stories set in the normal Disney continuity though, so there are two different Duck Avenger continuities.

The Disney Italy version of the Duck Avenger - or Papernik - is exactly the one I'm referring to. The writing in those stories were pretty darn good. Very complex, deep and moving. Particularly the ones of the Everett Ducklair arc which was one huge ongoing, epic storyline, while what came before and after in the that comic franchise were more episodic. Also in that arc there was this one character working alongside the main villain - Birgit Q - who I can swear is a knock-off of Konoko, the main character in the video game Oni developed by Bungie, what with the purple hair and the special task force armor she wears^^

As a kid I was a huge fan of Paperinik (old version). When the new version came out I was around 20, and initially I loved it! But after some issues, it looked like it was going to be the same of Marvel comic: a lot of story thread that start and never really end. I think I stopped buying it somewhere around issue 30.
It was very good quality though, at least at the beginning.
I don't know for the final parts.

There is also this: when I was a kid I was a big fan of the Mickey Mouse - Donald Duck world, I read the weekly magazine for years. Perhaps for this reason when stories come out that were somewhat outside that continuity it slightly irked me: Duck Tales irked me, Paperinick (new continuity) slighlty irked me although had a strong cool factor, and I never could get nearer than 500m to Kingdom Hearts without strong repercussions.