History Main / RecycledScript

* Donald Sobol's ''Two-Minute Mysteries'' includes a story of a man who tries to impress his date with a fake medal his great-grandfather supposedly received, marked as a medal of valor from the first battle of Bull Run. The challenge is to figure out why the medal is obviously fake. Either it's obvious because [[spoiler:it wasn't called the ''first'' battle of Bull Run until after there was a ''second'' battle of Bull Run]] . . . or it's obvious because Sobol used the same mystery in his ''Literature/EncyclopediaBrown'' series.

* ''{{Dragnet}}'' liked to recycle scripts at various points. One notable one was the Christmas episode involving a poor boy who took the statue of the child Jesus from the church he attended because he'd finally gotten the red wagon he asked for and wanted to give the child Jesus the first ride. It was done on the radio show, the black and white TV series and the color remake.

** A CutawayGag in one episode shows Peter drinking the communion wine at church and then cracking a joke about how Jesus Christ was wasted everyday. About two seasons later in a different episode, the gag is reused, but DVDCommentary states that the reuse of the gag was purely by accident.

* The season 1 ''[[MASHTheSeries M* A* S* H]]'' episode "The Ringbanger" has Hawkeye and Trapper [[{{GasLighting}} gaslighting]] a colonel (LeslieNielsen) who has gained "twice as many casualties but only half the ground" as other commanders into thinking he has battle fatigue and needs leave to cool off. "White Gold", the second last episode of season three, has Hawkeye and Trapper remove Colonel Flagg's appendix to send him stateside for several weeks. While it's played for laughs, a similar plot would be used to much more serious effect in season 7's "Preventive Medicine": in that episode, Hawkeye performs an unnecessary appendectomy on a gung-ho colonel so he can't lead his troops into a suicidal objective (provoking an enemy attack on a hill he was ordered to avoid), but B.J. will have nothing to do with it, accusing Hawkeye of [[WhatTheHellHero violating their ethical code as doctors]]. So, the plot was recycled not once, but twice.

* The JohnWayne movies ''RioBravo'', ''ElDorado'', and ''RioLobo'' were pretty much the exact same story, just with a different supporting cast.
** And John Carpenter has admitted that Film/AssaultOnPrecinct13 is a city-slum version of Rio Bravo. He wanted to make a Western, but couldn't do it within his budget.
* The writer of ''TheCuriousCaseOfBenjaminButton'' also adapted ''ForrestGump''. [[http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1897317 Comparisons have been made.]]

* This trope was the basis for the early [[TooGoodToLast short lived]] 2000s NBC show called ''TheRerunShow'' in which a group of actors took actual scripts of old shows such as ''Series/{{Bewitched}}'' and ''MarriedWithChildren'', and used the same exact dialog, while spoofing the show with props and actions.

* The ''WesternAnimation/CourageTheCowardlyDog'' episode ''Curtain of Cruelty'' has an identical plot to ''The Tower of Dr. Zalost''; a scientist causes the entire town of Nowhere to become miserable, just like him, and the solution involves one of Muriel's homemade recipes. Also, Eustace is immune because he's already so cruel. Both episodes do have several differences though, for instance ''Dr. Zalost'' is a full 30-minute episode, while ''Curtain of Cruelty'' is a normal [[TwoShorts 15-minute short]].

* After Curly Howard's stroke, ''TheThreeStooges'' attempted to get the audience attached to his replacement Shemp by making several of their old shorts over again with Shemp in the Curly part. Results were less than successful.

** The ''Film/Juon'' (aka ''The Grudge'') series is a special case. The first, no-budget, shot-on-video film had over 30 minutes of its footage recycled into the second video film to make a 76-minute ''Ju-On 2'' that was only half new material. After that, the various bigger-budget theatrical versions, in Japan and the US, were also partially original works and partially remakes of segments from the video films and/or earlier theatrical entries (though at least in these cases they were actually re-shot). This finally ended in 2009 with the American straight-to-video ''The Grudge 3'' and the Japanese double-bill ''Ju-On: White Ghost'' and ''Ju-On: Black Ghost'', all of which were entirely original.

** The ''Film/Ju-On'' (aka ''The Grudge'') series is a special case. The first, no-budget, shot-on-video film had over 30 minutes of its footage recycled into the second video film to make a 76-minute ''Ju-On 2'' that was only half new material. After that, the various bigger-budget theatrical versions, in Japan and the US, were also partially original works and partially remakes of segments from the video films and/or earlier theatrical entries (though at least in these cases they were actually re-shot). This finally ended in 2009 with the American straight-to-video ''The Grudge 3'' and the Japanese double-bill ''Ju-On: White Ghost'' and ''Ju-On: Black Ghost'', all of which were entirely original.

->''"You'd go to the producer or the story editor and say something like, "How about a ghost who's an aardvark and he's been haunting ant farms?"

The producer or story editor would consult a list of all the episodes produced to date, and there was about a 95% chance he'd look up from it and say, "Did it in Season Four" or whatever season it had been in. Sometimes, they'd say, "Did it in Seasons Two, Four, Five and I have one in the works right now, same idea.""''

->''"It's like they had a parrot on the staff during the editorial meetings that just kept pitching "[[{{Superman}} Lois]] [[SuperpowerSillyPutty gets super powers]]! Lois gets super powers!" over and over again...''\\

* The first ComicBook/{{Batman}} story "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate" is a recycling of the plot of Literature/TheShadow story "Partners in Peril".

* ''KaputAndZosky'' was rather fond of this, recycling not just scripts but entire episodes themselves. One episode has them try to take over a planet, only to find all of its inhabitants fleeing because it is about to be destroyed at sundown. Kaput and Zoski try to flee, only to have the planet blow up beneath them ([[IGotBetter they're okay]]). The episode was later repackaged as a new episode, with only new dialogue used, with the plot changed to the planet, this time a popular tourist destination, becoming unpopular.

** AndrewLloydWebber does this frequently, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. [[PhantomOfTheOpera "Music of the Night"]] started life as [[AspectsOfLove "Married Man"]], [[JesusChristSuperstar "I Don't Know How To Love Him"]] was originally published under the title of "Kansas Morning," and a song called "The Heart is Slow to Learn" was written for a proposed sequel to ''Phantom'', used as "Our Kind of Love" in ''The Beautiful Game'', then pulled back ''out'' of that musical to serve its original purpose as the title song for ''LoveNeverDies''.

* About half the songs (maybe more) of songwriter and composer Jim Steinman (famous for his collaborations with Meat Loaf) were written for, or later used in, various musical theater projects he'd either written or was on board for as part the creative team. These include: Neverland (produced at his college, which eventually led to Meat Loaf's "Bat Out Of Hell" album), Wuthering Heights (produced for MTV), an aborted Batman stage musical, Tanz der Vampire and Whistle Down The Wind.

* And averted with extreme prejudice by ''CalvinAndHobbes'' and ''TheFarSide'', none of which recycled an earlier comic.
** (Actually, ''CalvinAndHobbes'' twice used the joke about the 1812 Overture firing cannons in a crowded music hall. The repetition was presumably inadvertent.)

* Cirque du Soleil does this occasionally by moving an established act (and often its performers) from one show to another, with costuming, staging, and music revised to fit its new home. It happened most often in TheNineties, when the company was much smaller, but still turns up today. The most extreme case was with the 1992 Japan-only tour ''Fascination'', which mostly consisted of acts from the ''Theatre/LeCirqueReinvente'' and ''Theatre/NouvelleExperience'' tours, which didn't visit that country. The visuals and theme duplicated those of ''Reinvente''.

* The season 1 ''[[MASHTheSeries M* A* S* H]]'' episode "The Ringbanger" has Hawkeye and Trapper [[{{GasLighting}} gaslighting]] a colonel (LeslieNielsen) who has gained "twice as many casualties but only half the ground" as other commanders into thinking he has battle fatigue and needs leave to cool off. While it's played for laughs, a similar plot would be used to much more serious effect in season 7's "Preventive Medicine": in that episode, Hawkeye performs an unnecessary appendectomy on a gung-ho colonel so he can't lead his troops into a suicidal objective (provoking an enemy attack on a hill he was ordered to avoid), but B.J. will have nothing to do with it, accusing Hawkeye of [[WhatTheHellHero violating their ethical code as doctors]].

* After the success of its mass trauma episode "Blizzard" and its "one doctor, one case" episode "Love's Labor Lost", {{ER}} began trotting out similar episodes each season. This got so common that fans came up with a MemeticMutation of "a _________at a______________floods the ER with patients" to describe certain episodes.

** TheLongEarth was adapted from an earlier short story, 'The High Meggas.'

* CirqueDuSoleil does this occasionally by moving an established act (and often its performers) from one show to another, with costuming, staging, and music revised to fit its new home. It happened most often in TheNineties, when the company was much smaller, but still turns up today. The most extreme case was with the 1992 Japan-only tour ''Fascination'', which mostly consisted of acts from the ''Theatre/LeCirqueReinvente'' and ''NouvelleExperience'' tours, which didn't visit that country. The visuals and theme duplicated those of ''Reinvente''.

* CirqueDuSoleil does this occasionally by moving an established act (and often its performers) from one show to another, with costuming, staging, and music revised to fit its new home. It happened most often in TheNineties, when the company was much smaller, but still turns up today.
** The 1992 Japan-only tour ''Fascination'' mostly consisted of acts from the ''LeCirqueReinvente'' and ''NouvelleExperience'' tours, which didn't visit that country. The visuals and theme duplicated those of ''Reinvente''.
** Aerial cube moved from ''{{Alegria}}'' to ''{{Mystere}}'' after the latter's manipulation act was moved to ''{{Quidam}}'' in 1996.
** ''Quidam'''s current clown segments (AudienceParticipation involving a date and a film shoot) are from the 1990-93 tour ''Nouvelle Experience''.
** The Macau show ''ZAIA'' revived the comic symphony conductor act that appeared in their [[Main/TheEighties Eighties]] tours.
** The original ''KOOZA'' juggling act was ported over to ''Theatre/LaNouba'' in 2011.
** After the Tokyo Disneyland-based show ''ZED'' was forced to close in 2011 after the post-earthquake tourism slowdown in Japan, its aerial tissu and trapeze acts were incorporated into ''Mystere'' (replacing the first half of the bungee act and the high bar routine, respectively) the following year.

** The original ''KOOZA'' juggling act was ported over to ''LaNouba'' in 2011.

* Not the ''entire'' script, but at least enough similarities to raise an eyebrow: In most books / webcomics / what-have-you of Dozerfleet Comics, the way to tell a villain is truly evil is that he targets a [[FantasticRacism specific group for genocide]], then has the men [[{{Gorn}} disemboweled]] and the women [[OffWithHisHead decapitated]]...''ritually'' upon capture. And ''then'', he turns his victim's corpses into ''museum exhibits'' for the ReligionOfEvil to gawk at.
** It's already happened [[http://dozerfleetwiki2.wiki-site.com/index.php/Mechanical_Conflict at]] [[StationeryVoyagers least]] [[CiemWebcomicSeries thrice]].
*** In fact, the villain's preferred victims in all three stories / franchises appear to be [[AuthorAppeal super-skinny]], AmbiguouslyBrown heroines [[AuthorAppeal with long, black, silky, shiny hair]].
** ''Mechanical Conflict'' had the Vehement Viper, a reptilian monster who was a LargeHam that dressed in a black monk's cloak. [[DontExplainTheJoke Guess what]] the [[StationeryVoyagers Vile Chameleon]] is (besides [[spoiler: [[{{Satan}} the Devil]]]])?
** ''[[CiemWebcomicSeries Ciem]]'' has it especially bad. Candi believes Donte is dead, and has a HeroicBSOD...just like Anyce Hamilton in ''Replox''. Speaking of Hamiltons, there's a Hamilton family helping the hero out in both ''Replox'' and ''Ciem''. If it didn't work last time, figure out where it ''does'' work.

* ''[[WesternAnimation/AvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes]]'' episodes "Gamma World" and "Code Red" both have a villain using a fictional brand of science to disfigure crowds of people, Captain America, Wasp, and Black Panther becoming disfigured, at least one Avenger having the antidote (created by another crimefighter) shot into himself or herself, and Thor evading a transformation before engaging in a side battle with a gamma-powered monster.