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  • There's this Action Replay DS package. Warning: May include Not-Pokémon-At-All and Not-Bowser-At-All, among other Not-Game-Characters-At-All. Despite all their “hard work”, they forgot to edit Piplup, making it all for naught.
  • Gravelyn from AdventureQuest Worlds is very much the ersatz of Jessica Rabbit as far as looks are concerned. They share the same red hair.
  • AlienTic is a Tic-Tac-Toe game featuring Trab and Asil.
  • In Alpha Runner, some characters resemble the design of Homestar from Homestar Runner, including Homestar wearing office attire.
  • The Shroomy monster in Arle no Bouken is essentially a giant Super Mushroom without spots.
  • The Mobile Phone Game Banana Kong could be said to resemble Donkey Kong Country, but Banana Kong has a more cheerful facial expression than Donkey Kong.
  • Battle Camp is a P&D clone with ads showing characters inspired by Ash, Blastoise, Charmander, Pichu, Ivysaur, Eevee, Mudkip, and Cubone.
  • Rodin in Bayonetta is an ersatz of Morpheus from The Matrix. Not to mention that Enzo is almost an exact copy of Joe Pesci.
  • The Final Boss of Best Bout Boxing is the imposing, blond, red-wearing Russian boxer Draef Varona. Totally not Ivan Drago.
  • Nearly every NPC in Billy vs. SNAKEMAN. Some of your allies even change who they are ersatzes of as they level up.
  • Most of the survivors in Bitejacker are based on either classic game characters (like Mario or Ness) or veterans of the Zombie Apocalypse genre (like Louis).
  • The True Final Boss of the first Blaster Master looks like an orange version of the Gouf mobile suit from Mobile Suit Gundam, complete with the energy whip, shield, and Spikes of Villainy.
  • Blaster Tank and Heavy Weapon: Rambo Tank are very obviously based on Heavy Weapon, a shoot-em up having a tank that fires Spread Shots and similar weaponry up to and including Smart Bomb nukes. The bosses of Rambo Tank are even Captain Ersatzes of Heavy Weapon's bosses, being similar war machines with the same attacks and combat styles!
  • Hazama is the standout case from BlazBlue. Voiced (in English) by Doug Erholtz, has a low-cut hair style and keeps his Eyes Always Shut, with a Cheshire Cat Grin, a snake motif and a sadistic, manipulative demeanor, who pretends to amiable and polite? Clearly Gin Ichimaru before he went to the Soul Society.
    • Terumi, his ghost form, looks suspiciously like the Anti-Spiral.
  • Most of the unlockable characters in the Mobile Phone Game Bowmasters are thinly-veiled parodies of popular licensed characters. Just to name a few: there's "Bad Girl" (Harley Quinn), "Ice Lord" (Loki), "T-666" (the T-800), "Mancat" (Batman), "Young Tree" (Groot), "Anonymous" (V), "Maestro" (Walter White), "Dr. Sick" (Rick Sanchez), "Fernando" (Mario), "Reddish" (Deadpool), "Master Chef" (Master Chief), "Frost" (Subzero), "James" (Jason Voorhees), "Robert Spark" (Tony Stark), "Space King" (Star Lord), "Gabe Freeman" (Gordon Freeman), "Hunger Girl" (Katniss Everdeen), and "Templar" (Connor Kenway).
  • The entire cast of the surprisingly good Street Fighter II ripoff Breakers is meant to suggest one character from that game or another. Tia is Chun Li (she even does her Lightning Kicks), Sho is Ryu, Pielle and Saizo split elements of Vega (Pielle being a vain Spaniard and Saizo being a ninja), Alsion III and Maherl split elements of Dhalsim (Alsion stretches and breathes poison, while Maherl inflates and breathes fire), Condor is T. Hawk, Rila is Blanka, Dao Long is a Chinese-Korean Guile with plot points from both Ken (being the Ryu equivalent's rival) and Cammy (being related to the Big Bad), and Bai Hu is M. Bison.
  • For the web game Caesary (which has actually been advertised on TV Tropes itself), there's this amazon character... which is blatantly meant to be a Wonder Woman knockoff. Seriously, the only differences are that she has more armor and (slightly) less clothing.
  • Cannon Spike's playable roster is composed almost entirely of characters from existing Capcom properties. The sole exception is Simone, who is just a hairstyle and a slight wardrobe change away from being Lieutenant Linn Kurosawa from Alien vs. Predator (Capcom), whose ownership is apparently tied up with 20th Century Fox.
  • Everyone in Legend of Heroes. The game itself is a rather blatant ripoff of Mulan, with all it's named characters plagiarized from the then 2-year-old Disney film. Your princess heroine, Falan, is Mulan by another name with your partner General Liang based off General Shang and your two other allies being two heroic soldiers looking exactly like Yao and Chien-po from the movie. The villains and bosses are lifted from the Disney film as well, the Big Bad Chen-yu being a dead ringer to Shan-yu, which the game's developers doesn't even attempt to disguise.
  • On the game icon of the Mobile Phone Game Chroisen2, the main character resembles Cloud Strife.
  • City of Heroes, as a pastiche of Super Hero comic books, has a lot of characters that are pretty clearly this:
    • Statesman, the biggest of the setting's heroes, is a fusion of Superman and Captain America, with some Captain Marvel thrown in for good measure by way of his origin story.
    • Positron is a radioactive Iron Man.
    • Manticore is Batman with the fighting style of Green Arrow. (So basically, Batman.) That, or Hawkeye. And the friendly sparring between Statesman and Manticore resembles that of Captain America and Hawkeye in The Avengers.
    • Sister Psyche heavily resembles Jean Grey, down to being a redhead.
    • Synapse, the token speedster, is generally considered an equivalent to The Flash.
    • Back Alley Brawler seems to have a little of Luke Cage, and/or Wildcat.
    • Lord Recluse is pretty much Doctor Doom with more lackeys.
    • The evil Arachnos organisation is essentially Cobra with the snake iconography replaced by spiders.
  • COS Battle has characters based on Asuka, Rei, and Sachiel from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Guts from Berserk, Frieza from Dragon Ball Z, Harry Potter from Harry Potter, Jotaro Kujo from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Shimakaze from KanColle, Son Goku from Dragon Ball, characters from Bleach, Ikki Tousen, Iron Man, Naruto, Neptunia, One Piece, Rurouni Kenshin, Slam Dunk, Ultraman, and more.
  • Cosmos Cop, a Space Harrier clone by Mega Soft, also in the Caltron 6 in 1 multicart, features a character with a strong resemblance to Gundam.
  • In Cry of Fear: Sawrunner (not to be mistaken with the boss Sawer) a maniac that brandishes a chainsaw, howls loudly when attacking, and wears an uncanny mask. He is just like Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it does not make him any less terrifying.
  • Mobile Phone Game Cutie Riot, formerly Clash of Cuties, has Queen's Blade inspired characters Aegean (Airi), Ailina (Elina), Allain (Alleyne), Almendra (Aldra), Aludra (Aldra, QB Rebellion), Annelot (Annelotte), Argento (Echidna), Brain (Branwen), Cartera (Cattleya), Claudia (Claudette), Elicia (Alicia), Goldie (Goldie), Izumi (Izumi), Kaguya (Kaguya), Lena (Leina), Liess (Risty), Luna (Luna Luna), Merlot (Melpha), Mero (Melona), Milieu (Mirim), Nanalu (Nanael), Nikki (Nyx), Pak (Tomoe), Rena (Laila), Sarah (Zara), Stella (Stella, DQ3), Ticky (Sigui), Lady Turret & Lady Sai (Tanyang & Sainyang), Uni (Yuit & Vante), and Venus (Menace), plus NPCs with the same character sprites. The story even refers to a Queen's Blade competition.
  • The characters in Cyclomaniacs are mostly hilariously blatant knockoffs of prominent cultural figures, including Elvis Presley (Cycle King), Mr. T (Mr. C), Number 6 (Letter F - 'escaped from Wales on a souped-up penny farthing'), The Stig (The Wheel), and Laurel and Hardy (The Bowler Brothers); but also contains versions of prominent Indie Game figures, like Fancy Pants (Farty Pants).
  • Kuon Sumeragi from the Examu fighting game Daemon Bride, resembles Setsuna F Seiei, complete with the same voice actor and the last name (Setsuna's boss is Sumeragi Lee Noriega).
  • Rhythm MMO Dance On rather shamelessly steals clothing and hairstyles from Love Live!, Touhou Project, Di Gi Charat, NieR: Automata, and Neon Genesis Evangelion, among others. Humorously, Nico Yazawa's hairstyle is named "Nicole Nicole". If that wasn't bad enough, many of them are premium items, meaning they're making money off of the blatant copyright infringement.
  • Kaito Momota, the Ultimate Astronaut in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is blatantly inspired by Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. He's a brash, cocky guy sharing a brotherly bond with the protagonist and a similar fashion sense to his predecessor, optimistic as hell, and his primary goal in life is to reach the heavens. The English version goes so far as to even have them share a voice actor with the occasional line about "making the impossible possible".
    Kaito, after punching the protagonist: Clench your teeth!
    Keebo: Kaito! You are supposed to say that before you hit him!
  • Dead by Daylight: Many killers in the game are obviously inspired by more famous horror characters. The Trapper echoes Jason Voorhees, the Nurse echoes the Silent Hill Nurses, and the Hillbilly echoes Leatherface (who was eventually added to the game later). The most obvious one of them is Ghost Face. Since the developers only have the licence for the mask, he is not actually the Ghost Face from the Scream movies. However, his glory-seeking background and usage of modern technology and culture evokes the feeling of the films.
  • Dead Island: Riptide introduces us to John Morgan...wait, sorry, that is actually who he is based on.
  • Dead or Alive has a few.
    • Zack is Dennis Rodman.
    • Bass falls midway between Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage.
    • Mila in DOA 5 is an ersatz Gina Carano.
  • Francis York Morgan of Deadly Premonition is one of Dale Cooper of Twin Peaks, only perhaps even weirder and his love of coffee taken to fortune-telling levels.
  • The box art of the unlicensed NES game Deathbots is an obvious ripoff of the Terminator, and the game has a suspiciously similar plotline, with a MegaCorp creating a Skynet-like AI that takes over the world's computer systems.
  • Dian Shi Ma Li stars an illegitimate relative of Mario called Fortran.
  • Dirty Larry is the eponymous star of an Atari Lynx game featuring him as a... "Renegade Cop". We can surely assume that any similarity to Dirty Harry - another well-known renegade cop- is purely coincidental!
  • In Do you know de way, the Queen resembles Princess Peach.
  • Konami's 3DS game Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights is about a top hat-wearing archaeologist who solves mysteries with the help of his young assistant by doing puzzles. Sound familiar?
  • The first stage boss in the original arcade version of the first Double Dragon is a head-swap of Abobo with a Mr. T-like beard and mohawk. In Mission 3, he gets a green palette swap obviously based on The Incredible Hulk. In the arcade version of II, Burnov resembles the masked version of the wrestler Neptuneman from Kinnikuman, Abore resembles a cross between the Terminator and André the Giant, and Ohara and Bolo (who replace Abobo) resemble their namesakes from Enter the Dragon.
  • Mobile Phone Game Dragon Bane: Dwarves, Night Elves, Orcs, Pandaren, and Tauren from World of Warcraft.
  • Since the characters in Dragon Quest VIII were designed by Akira Toriyama, many of them are ersatzes of Dragon Ball Z characters; e.g. Hero=Kid Gohan, Trode=Namek Elder, Angelo=Trunks, Kalderasha=Mr. Satan, Valentina=Pan, Jessica=Bulma.
  • One of the Dream Club characters Rui is an Ersatz of Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts Himeji. Heck it even has Hitomi Harada voicing her. Making Rui the future version of Himeji (Aka teacher by day, hostess by night)
  • In Dungeon Keeper, The Avatar is meant to be The Avatar circa Ultima VIII.
  • A version of the snake clone Edacity Snakes, included on a 16-bit Plug & Play Famiclone console, has a snake on the title screen that looks like Kaa from The Jungle Book (1967).
  • The Big Bad of Real Bout Fatal Fury Special: Dominated Mind is White, who's appearance, personality and mannerisms make him a dead ringer of Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange. Unlike the next time a blatant character ripoff appeared in one of SNK's games, the relative obscurity of Dominated Mind (seeing as it was Japan-exclusive) plus the fact that he was rather quickly Killed Off for Real at the end of that game meant that White didn't become as notorious as K9999 did.
  • Fallout 4 has holotape games that are similar to real-world games, including:
  • Faraway Kingdom: Epic Heroes DC Droid, Roto, Minnea (Dragon Quest III Priestess), Mage Bianco, Mage Nero, Mage Rosso (White Mage, Black Mage and Red Mage), and Aladdin.
  • Fear & Hunger has a fairly obvious Griffith knockoff in Le'garde, who is also a Long-Haired Pretty Boy mercenary captain with an Ignored Enamored Underling, who commits several atrocities to attain godhood, convincing themselves even as they abandon their humanity that it is for the greater good.
  • And then there's Final Combat, which slightly resembles Team Fortress 2. And by "slightly resembles", we mean "is The Mockbuster of". Except that it also has straight Captain Ersatzes of the classes too (such as the Rocket for the Soldier and the Fatman for the Heavy), so it counts on both. Moreover, the maps are stolen from Battlefield Heroes.
    • Xunlei would eventually joke about it, saying that Valve clearly stole their idea four years before they had it.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has Odin, Laslow, and Selena, three characters who look and act exactly like Owain, Inigo, and Severa from Fire Emblem: Awakening. Except not - they're the real deal, all using assumed names. There's also Rhajat, a preincarnation of Tharja; Caeldori, who is a dead ringer for Cordelia and can potentially be her granddaughter; and Asugi, who has no excuse for his resemblance to Gaius.
  • Fire Pro Wrestling:
    • The games are absolutely loaded with Captain Ersatzes of pro wrestlers from around the world. Many of the American ones in some of the games have hilarious, Gratuitous English permutations on their real name. "Steel Gold" Steam Odin? Seriously?
    • The Randy Savage clone Slim Jim Mr. Mann from Fire Pro Wrestling on the Game Boy Advance! Actually, that was probably one of those rare instances where a Fire Pro Wrestling game got an English translation that was intentionally silly.
  • Fishdom has ads with characters resembling Finding Nemo.
  • In Frank Bruno's Boxing, three of the boxers are modified versions of the boxers from the arcade version of Super Punch-Out!!: Canadian Crusher is Bear Hugger, Fling Long Chop is Dragon Chan, and Andra Puncheredov is Soda Popinski.
  • Both Freedom Force games are rife with this. All of the characters have Captain Ersatz powers.
    • The Minuteman is Captain America, just wearing a funny 18th-century costume and using a staff instead of a shield.
    • Mentor is Martian Manhunter with a touch of Professor X
    • El Diablo is Human Torch.
    • Man-Bot is a weird mixture of Cyclops and Iron Man. Power Incontinence In A Can. He also has Doctor Strange's origin (rich asshole turned hero after screwing up his life in an accident)
    • Alchemiss is Scarlet Witch with a Southern accent. With a lot of Phoenix in the sequel. The Southern accent comes from Rogue, presumably.
    • Bullet is The Flash.
    • Liberty Lad is Robin. A Burt Ward-campy Robin. And Bucky, as the sidekick of the Minuteman.
    • Blackbird is Black Canary (Sonic scream, wears fishnets) with Catwoman's backstory.
    • And then there's Supercollider - a super-strong, tough-talking bruiser with rocky orange skin and a thick Noo Yoik accent. Nope, can't think of anyone else who fits that description.
    • The Ant, whose 'Secret Origin' video may as well have just said "Yes, he's Peter Parker. Now go have fun."
    • Microwave is plainly meant to represent The Vision and the Red Tornado personality-wise.
    • Man O' War and the Sea Urchin are Aquaman and Aqualad
  • Freedom Planet: Lilac is one of these for Sonic the Hedgehog. Makes sense, considering Freedom Planet was initially a fan-based Sonic game until it became its own thing. Lilac herself was a hedgehog before she became a water dragon.
  • Front Page Sports Football boasted of rosters with real-life NFL players when it had the NFLPA license. Well, almost everyone. For a couple examples, Joe Montana became "Maurice Dakota" (presumably nicknamed Mo), while the much lesser-heralded wide receiver Jeff Query became Johnny Ask. And what about the tight end named Lawyer Tillman? He became Attorney Farmer.
  • Ghost Hunter is itself a Captain Ersatz for the Ghostbusters franchise.
  • The SPANKED-up suicide bombers in Grand Theft Auto III's "Kingdom Come" mission behave eerily similar to the Exploding BOBS from the Marathon series.
  • Halo: 343 Guilty Spark talks like C-3P0. "Hello, I am 343 Guilty Spark, the monitor of Installation 04", and "Your behavior is not in accordance with established protocols".
  • Heroes Charge, based on DotA Legends, has character designs from Defense of the Ancients and League of Legends. The World of Warcraft Pandaren makes a return. Characters also resemble those from Soul Clash.
  • Heroes and Titans: There's these Pandas wearing bamboo hats.
  • Heroes of Newerth was originally developed with the intention of being a stand-alone version of Defense of the Ancients: All-Stars, with all the assets from Warcraft III replaced with ones based on S2 Games's previous game, Savage. The baseline mechanics and items are almost completely identical to DotA's, but the heroes zig-zag this. Some are visual clones of the original like Night Hound (to Riki), while others are more distinct like Witch Slayer (to Lion).
    • Likewise, Dota 2 redesigned their heroes to also be different from Warcraft units, but most of them are almost visually identical to their original counterparts, including whatever creature they're supposed to be. Some of the Adaptation Species Change are noticably different, while others are just an Ersatz of common fantasy creatures. This can extend to some of the hero names, such as Lyralei the Windranger, formerly Alleria Windrunner, a major Warcraft character.
  • The G1 Jockey Horse Racing series, produced by Koei, has a calendar based entirely upon the Japanese horse racing season. Despite this, European releases have had the event names almost entirely changednote . Some, like the Japanese Triple Crown races, were logically changed to their European counterparts. Some were changed to mimic prestigious European events (the Arima Kinen instead became the Arc Grand Prix, itself an ersatz of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe). Others, meanwhile, were changed to generic-sounding races with no European equivalent; the two Tenno Sho events became the "Gold Vase" and "Champion Trophy", while the Japan Cup became the "National Grand Prix".
    • And the point became irrelevant after Koei merged with Tecmo; the sequel, Champion Jockey, uses the official Japanese race names when the player races in Japan, while using the ersatz names in the European half of the game.
  • Human Grand Prix for the Nintendo 64 didn't have the rights to use the actual names of drivers, meaning that the game was filled with drivers with names such as Hamon Dillnote , Schael Mihumachernote , Babens Rurrichellonote , Hohnny Jerbertnote , Hika Makkinennote , Lean Ajesinote  and Vacques Jilleneuvenote , among others. This was rectified for the US/European version of the game, F1 Pole Position 64, which had the actual racer names.
  • The Capcom's online game Hyaku-nen Senki: Euro Historia (Based on the Hundred Years' War) has a walking ripoff in the shape of Joan of Arc: Not only does she look like Saber, she even shares the same voice actress as well.
  • Icons: Battle Arena was created by Project M's developers after their Cease and Desist from Nintendo, and the game itself is an Esratz to Super Smash Bros. Melee and Project M, right down the mechanics and the characters. Anyone who is familiar with Marth, Ganondorf, and Fox/Falco would feel right at home with the free roster, since they play virtually the same. Unfortunately, the fact it was too similar to Melee/PM worked against the game's favor.
  • Mighty Manager from Data Age's Journey Escape for the Atari 2600 bears an uncanny resemblance to Kool-Aid Man.
  • With the changes to his personality for the 2013 reboot, Cinder of Killer Instinct has changed from a tragic Death Seeker to basically an evil version of Human Torch, with some elements of his design based on Ultron.
  • One example of taking this too far comes from The King of Fighters 2001 with the character K9999, a Captain Ersatz of Tetsuo Shima from AKIRA who even had the same voice actor. After SNK Playmore bought the rights to all of the Eolith-owned characters from KOF 2k1 and KOF 2k2, K9999 became a legal liability for the company and was replaced by a more original character Nameless in the Updated Re-release The King of Fighters 2002: Unlimited Match, who substitutes K9999 in the canon. Then in KOF XV, he gets another Suspiciously Similar Substitute in the form of Krohnen, only for his team's ending to reveal that he is K9999, just under a different identity to hide from NESTS remnants.
  • The various creatures having throwdowns in Japan in King of the Monsters are directly inspired by some kind of preexisting giant monster, particularly Japanese tokusatsu shows and kaiju movies.
    • Geon is very obviously inspired by Godzilla himself.
    • Woo, in turn, is King Kong in all but name.
    • Poison Ghost is derived from Hedorah.
    • Rocky roughly based on a giant stone warrior known as Daimajin.
    • Astro Guy owes much to Ultraman—he even shares the pose for the Specium Ray.
    • Beetle Mania resembles Megalon.
  • Confusingly enough, the version of Cloud in Kingdom Hearts looks and acts more like Vincent. This was mainly because Vincent was originally going to have the role in the first Kingdom Hearts game.
  • The original version of La-Mulana was developed as a love letter to Knightmare II: The Maze of Galious, and features a lot of references to other MSX games made by Konami. For the remake, which is paid software unlike the original, the dev team had to remove some obvious copyrighted elements from it:
    • Lemeza no longer carries an MSX in it nor does he collect MSX cartridges. Instead, he carries the Mobile Super X and collects physical copies of other games developed by NIGORO.
    • "Curse of IRON PIPE" has a few sections that borrow straight from Ashguine 2's title theme. For the remake, those sections were rewritten and the track was renamed to "Curse of Ocean", as the mention of iron pipes is also a reference to that game.
  • Mobile Phone Game Legend of Titans has characters resembling those from Overwatch, including D.Va, Reaper, Roadhog, and Tracer.
  • In Acclaim's Legends Of Wrestling II career mode, regional promoters are somewhat based on existing promoters Vince McMahon, Ted Turner (WCW), Paul Heyman, Christine Jarrett, Jim Crockett, and Hiro Matsuda.
  • The Commodore 64 homebrew games Leisure Suit Leo and Leisure Suit Leo 2 - The Secret Of Maniac Island parody Leisure Suit Larry, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Paperboy.
  • The 'Present' chapter of Live A Live includes a battle against a wrestler by the name of Max Morgan, who is a none-too-subtle ripoff of Hulk Hogan.
  • The Lord of the Rings Online does this on occasion. The developers only have the right to use stuff from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, anything else is off-limits. This means that if something is referenced to in The Lord of the Rings but the name only appears in say, The Silmarillion, they can't use the actual name. For example, when Sauron disguises himself to fool the elves of Eregion, he does so under the name of Antheron, Lord of Gifts in-game, where the original name is Annatar, Gift-Lord. On top of that, the elven settlement he visits is named Mirobel in-game, where the original name is Ost-In-Edhil. Off course, as a good number of players are familiar with Tolkien's works, they quickly spot the similarities.
  • The setting and plot of Lost Eden is very reminiscent of James Gurney's Dinotopia series.
  • Namco have admitted that the two titular players of their Buddy-Cop themed action game, Lucky & Wild are modeled after Starsky & Hutch.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny has the Florian sisters, who were clear composites of various Wild ARMs characters (Amita, for example, looks and acts like Virginia with a different costume and color scheme), as well as their dying desert planet of Eltria, which is the Wild ARMs series' dying desert planet of Filgaia under a different name. Nanoha creator and writer Tsuzuki confirms this in the official strategy guide, saying that they were created as a sign of respect towards Akifumi Kaneko, the creator of the Wild Arms games of which he has been a fan of since Wild ARMs 3.
  • The Hunters in the Marathon series are clearly inspired by the Predator, Shoulder Cannon included, and the S'pht, being basically tentacled brains in robotic exoskeletons, are reminiscent of the Daleks from Doctor Who.
  • The Masters Fighter, a 1997 Fighting Game for the PlayStation, is notorious for being considered one of the worst fighting games of all time, due to unresponsive controls, Hitbox Dissonance and poor graphics, but the main reason is, the characters designs were plagiarised from sprites from other games (The only possible exception is Gamp), and some of them are even fusions of two characters:
  • Mega Man began his life when Capcom wanted to make an Astro Boy game, but could not acquire the rights. He's come into his own right since then, of course.
  • Metal Gear:
  • If it's possible for a series to have a Captain Ersatz, then H.A.V.E. Online (known in America as Microvolts) a Korean online multiplayer shooter, is this in artistic tone to Team Fortress 2 (The gameplay of both are pretty dissimilar actually - H.A.V.E. Online is not class based, and is in 3rd person view). The choreography in the trailer is also pretty blatantly copied. Some people were not happy, to say the least — though once the original outrage had passed they were a little more forgiving. It also has its own ripoff of Haruhi Suzumiya. Ironically, the Japanese version of the game has the real Haruhi.
  • In Midas Gold Plus, the Eyeball Terror resembles a Beholder.
  • Panama Joe of the early 1980s home video game Montezuma's Revenge is another one for Indiana Jones.
  • The freeware Yuri Genre Visual Novel series Morning Star is heavily inspired by My-HiME, and has a Student Council President who looks exactly like Shizuru Fujino. Amusingly, the Shizuru-lookalike's name is Natsuki, Shizuru's crush.
  • Mortal Kombat has tons of it:
    • Liu Kang, who's modeled after obviously Bruce Lee.
    • Johnny Cage is practically Jean-Claude Van Damme.
    • Sonya Blade looked like Cynthia Rothrock.
    • Sektor and Cyrax are basically cybernetic versions of Predator.
    • Reiko's eye marks and haircut are identical to Nightwing.
    • Kenshi is essentially Daredevil meets telekinesis. Or perhaps Zatoichi from the titular Japanese TV series... meets telekinesis.
    • Kobra resembles Ken Masters in everything, however, due to it, he's widely hated.
    • Darrius is Mortal Kombat's own version of Wesley Snipes.
  • M.U.G.E.N characters are very often these, but Dragon Claw stands out for being both hand-made from scratch, yet very clearly meant to be a Katana from One Must Fall 2097. It has the triangular blade-hands, the muscular physique, ribbed thighs, and stubby feet, as well as all of the Katana's special moves from its native game such as the Rising Blade, Head Stomp, and Razor Spin. It even has powers based on the Optional Boss Fire from the same game. It has additional physical features and moves not found in the original game, but it's undeniable what it's supposed to be. Unfortunately, no answers or updates will ever be had, as the creator of Dragon Claw is the belated Reuben Kee.
  • In the Facebook game Mutants: Genetic Gladiators, Kitty Ranger is a Samurai Pizza Cats ersatz, Brick McGole is an ersatz LEGO astronaut, Brawler is an ersatz of Bowser, and the game's icon features a character resembling RoboCop.
  • Jon Dowd from the MVP Baseball series is a Captain Ersatz of Barry Bonds, who was not in the MLBPA at the time.
  • The Mystery Case Files games obviously try to put a back-story on several Disney Theme Parks rides, including one which already has a back-story. Ravenhearst and all variants in that series is Phantom Manor (a.k.a. Ravenwood Manor) and The Haunted Mansion; The 13th Skull is The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean.
  • Melody from Nostalgia (Red Entertainment) is the spitting image of Lina Inverse. Doctor Brown is also pretty close to Indy in appearance.
  • Omen of Sorrow is basically an Ersatz of Darkstalkers.
  • You in Overlord, especially when you get your best armor and a Mace of Doom, you're Sauron's equally Evil Twin.
  • Overwatch itself also has a Captain Ersatz in the form of Pachimari, which are likely a send-up of Merchandise-Driven "cute" character franchises from Japan such as Hello Kitty.
  • Party Animals has a fat orange cat named Garfat, clearly a pastiche of Garfield.
  • Tohru Adachi of Persona 4 looks (and acts) like Matsuda. At least, up until The Reveal.
  • Phoenix Games have characters resembling those from the Disney version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, on the cover of Snow White and the 7 Clever Boys. Cartoon Kingdom and the Dalmatians series have characters who resemble those from 101 Dalmatians. Animal Soccer World and Son of the Lion King have characters similar to those in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, with Son of the Lion King having characters similar to The Lion King. Adventures of Pinocchio resembles the Disney version of Pinocchio. Characters in Dinosaur Adventure resemble those in The Land Before Time. Mighty Mulan resembles the Disney version of Mulan.
  • If Perry Mason's best friend was a Japanese Reibai-tradition Spirit Medium, his name would be Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney!
  • Mobile Phone Game Pirates: Endless Voyage has the characters from One Piece. The ads don't attempt to hide this.
  • Pitfall Harry is also obviously inspired by Indy, and his Theme Music Power-Up in the second game sounds similar to the "Raiders March". The arcade game also has minecart and temple stages.
  • Pokémon:
  • In Poker Night at the Inventory, there's a character who looks and sounds suspiciously like Reginald Van Winslow but wears different clothing and is credited only as "The Host".
    • Averted in the sequel, where he explicitly introduces himself as Reginald Van Winslow.
  • In Pro Wrestling, the entire roster is based on famous Real Life wrestlers. Most obviously, Fighter Hayabusa is based on Antonio Inoki, and Giant Panther is based on Hulk Hogan.
  • The trope is directly referenced in the name of a Side Quest in Professor Layton's London Life, a bonus game packaged with some versions of Professor Layton and the Specter's Flute. In the quest "Ersatz Krantz," the Player Character must keep a meeting in the place of hotel employee Krantz.
  • The iPhone Punch-Out!! clone Super K.O. Boxing 2 features a boxer named Shogun. This boxer is actually from New York City, and is a Scary Black Man rather than an oriental. It makes little sense unless you've seen The Last Dragon. And in case you didn't already figure out that he was Sho'Nuff with the Serial Numbers Filed Off, his signature move causes his boxing gloves to glow as he attacks in darkness.
  • Ratatan: The dragon boss Dekadon seen in the trailer is a clear stand-in for Dodonga, possessing almost exact recreations of Dodonga's attacks. His Kickstarter description even comments he was made by another god and feels not in the right placenote .
  • Billy and Jimmy Lewis from Rage of the Dragons are obvious stand-ins for Billy and Jimmy Lee from Double Dragon. The game was initially developed as a Double Dragon spin-off, but the developers were unable to secure the rights to the license. The game's sub-boss character, Abubo, is also an obvious stand-in for Abobo.
  • Robopon has tons of them.
  • The Hentai game Season of the Sakura was really blatant about this, with the primary cast all coming from famous anime; the protagonist's father and school principal are Nobuyuki and Yosho/Katsuhito Masaki, his homeroom teacher is Misato Katsuragi, his best friend is Kensuke Aida, and the girls he can romance include Hikaru Shido, Umi Ryuzaki, Fuu Houji, Rei Ayanami, Asuka Langley, Seira Mimori, Meimi Haneoka, and Shoko Inaba. They don't even try hiding it; the character designs are identical (except for one or two having different hair colors), their personalities are pretty much the same, and some (such as Seira and Meimi) don't even get new names.
  • The Secret World has the Ur-Draug. A.K.A Cthulhu. As the final boss of a dungeon set to Lovecraft Country. Lore entries suggest that it's actually a scaled-down version of the setting's real Cthulhu.
  • Silent Hill:
  • The Sims has the pregenerated Goth family, who are similar to The Addams Family. With a Gender Flip, as Bella is more like Gomez while Mortimer (it's even in his name) is more like Morticia. They also all have the same Dark Is Not Evil personality and high levels of love for each other (thanks to pre-programmed Relationship Values, but still.)
  • Soccer Spirits: Sigmund is not dissimilar to Kojima Ayami's Alucard.
  • Soul Hunters: Vincent resembles Alucard, Alana resembles a World of Warcraft Night Elf, Drago resembles a World of Warcraft Orc, Gus resembles a Pandaren, Torsen resembles a World of Warcraft Dwarf, Slim resembles Vincent Valentine. Some character designs resemble League of Legends.
  • Given that it parodies the superhero genre, South Park: The Fractured but Whole pretty much have every single party member a stand in towards heroes.
    • Eric Cartman as the Coon is a parody of anti-heroes and The Cowl such as Batman and Wolverine.
    • Kyle Broflovski as the Human Kite can be a general stand in for X-Men characters due to his backstory of dealing with Fantastic Racism and specifically Cyclops with his eye beam powers and Angel with his healing and flight powers.
    • Craig Tucker as Super Craig is clearly a parody of Superman, particularly when it comes to Clark Kenting.
    • Jimmy Valmer as Fastpass resembles The Flash with both his appearance and being a super-speed themed superhero.
    • Clyde Donovan as Mosquito has a backstory that says that he was bitten by a radioactive mosquito, which sounds a lot like Spider-Man.
    • Scott Malkinson is Captain Diabetes, who gains super strength from his diabetes and being enraged, much like the Hulk. He even compares himself to Bruce Banner at one point.
    • Stan Marsh as Toolshed is a Badass Normal Gadgeteer Genius who uses gadgets that have a theme to it, much like Batman.
    • Wendy Testaburger as Call Girl is a dead ringer for gadget and tech themed heroes like Batgirl, Nightwing, and Huntress.
    • Butters Stotch as Professor Chaos obviously takes inspiration from Doctor Doom with his costume and even his name.
    • Kenny McCormick as Mysterion can be seen as based off of Spawn with having dark abilities and his infamous power of immortality.
    • Token Black as Tupperware is Cyborg for being a black cyborg but he also has some resemblance for Iron Man for always upgrading his costume and being the benefactor for the Freedom Pals.
    • Tweek Tweak as Wonder Tweek is based off of Wonder Woman and can manipulate the weather, much like Storm. He also spouts quotes from Sailor Moon, particularly the DiC Entertainment English dub.
    • Timmy Burch as Doctor Timothy is a wheelchair-bound telepathic hero just like Professor X.
    • Henrietta Biggle is basically just herself but has resemblance towards John Constantine with her occult abilities, being snarky and cynical, and being a smoker.
    • Bradley Biggle as Mintberry Crunch has an obsession with his power source, a space theme, and his race has a caste system, which can all be seen as a parody of The Inhumans.
  • The Desert Ruins level from Spyro: Year of the Dragon contains a character that is very blatantly Lara Croft turned into an anthropomorphic mouse.
  • The Dropship pilot from the StarCraft games takes most of her lines directly from the dropship pilot in Aliens.
    • Starcraft marines are a pretty obvious copy of Warhammer 40,000 Space Marines (as are Marauders and Firebats to some extent). The zerg bear a pretty heavy resemblance to the Tyranids, but there's something of Alien in there too.
      • Who ripped off who in this case is a matter of some extreme debate, rumors accusing Star Craft of originally being a Warhammer 40k game that lost the license and that the extensive redesign the Tyranids got after Starcrafts release have sparked a fairly intense Fandom Rivalry between the two franchises.
  • Star Gladiator has June Lin Milliam, who is totally not Minnie Mouse... or Leia.
  • Starswirl Academy was created as a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan game. Hasbro asked the devs to change the character's names. They however didn't change the designs. The girls are blatantly humanoid animesque versions of the main 6 characters.
  • Claude C. Kenny from Star Ocean: The Second Story is very much the Ersatz of Cress Albane. Makes sense as Tri-Ace worked on both of the games they come from.
  • Captain Marcus Refelian of Activision's Star Trek: Away Team video game is something of an Ersatz of Commander Sisko.
  • Balrog from Street Fighter II was modeled after Mike Tyson, right down to his character portrait in the original game. In fact, his name in the Japanese version was actually M. Bison (the "M" stood for "Mike"), but it was swapped with the names of the other two boss characters (Balrog and Vega) to avoid any potential likeness infringement overseas. Since Balrog was originally "Mike Bison" in Japan, this has led to the ongoing speculation on whether Mike (a character from the first Street Fighter) is the same guy or not.
    • Likewise, Alex, the protagonist of Street Fighter III, has some elements in common with Hulk Hogan. Capcom even gave him a special intro pose with Hugo (see below) imitating the legendary Hulk vs Andre the Giant fight from WrestleMania.
    • Andore from Final Fight is obviously modeled after André the Giant. When he appeared in Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact, his name was changed to Hugo, presumably to avoid any likeness infringement, although he was still called "Andore" in Final Fight: Revenge and Streetwise, which both came afterward. Eventually his name was confirmed as "Hugo Andore" and his pallet swaps were his brothers.
  • Super Fighter: Aircraft War has pilots Chopper, Perona, Robin, Usopp, Zoro,"catwoman", "Plant Mistress", "Super woman", Iron Man, Winter Warrior, and Ares/Mars the G Gundam.
  • Several Original Generation mecha from Super Robot Wars bear a strong resemblance to other Humongous Mecha franchises:
  • In Super Strip Fighter IV, Mari is an expy of Marin from Seifuku Densetsu Pretty Fighter, and Ran is an expy of Mai from The King of Fighters.
  • Surviving Mars has two of the sponsors, Space Y and Church of the New Ark, based on SpaceX and Mormonism respectively. Both of them were depicted in its original names in Gamescom demo.
  • Taichi Panda: So the Pandaren from that totally sweet Mists of Pandaria cover decided to leave Blizzard headquarters and star in his very own game.
  • Tales of Legendia features the Oresoren, who are intelligent fuzzy creatures who are good with machines and have a Verbal Tic. Anyone familiar with Final Fantasy would recognize them as being similar to Moogles. It might be a coincidence... until you realize that one of the most significant Oresoren is named "Quppo", pronounced exactly the same as the verbal tic of the Moogles ("kupo").
  • There are some Captain Ersatz (clones) characters in Tekken:
    • Lei Wulong is a Captain Ersatz for Jackie Chan.
    • Marshall/Forrest Law is a...much more blatant clone of Bruce Lee.
    • King is the Captain Ersatz of the Japanese wrestler Tiger Mask, with a little of Mexico's Fray Tormenta thrown in for good measure.
    • Craig Marduk looks a lot like...either Nathan Jones or Goldberg.
      • Nathan Jones has actually been confirmed as the inspiration behind Marduk. Jones and Marduk even share the exact same behavioural traits and a few similar moves.
    • Raven is apparently an accident. The character designer claims that he just wanted to make "A cool Black Guy". The final product strongly resembled Wesley Snipes as Blade.
    • Christie Monteiro is modelled after Tyra Banks and was given a few of Britney Spears' dance moves in a couple of her Tekken 5 win poses.
  • Temtem is a MMO inspired by Pokémon... heavily inspired by it. The mons resemble Pokémon (most blatantly with an Eeveelution-looking one), some of the trainers resemble Trainer Classes from Pokémon, and the characters evolve similarly to Pokémon. The interface and mechanics are also very Pokémon inspired.
  • Temple Run: While you don't get to play as the world's most famous explorer, Indiana Jones, you do get to play as the world's second most famous explorer... Montana Smith. And yes, he wears the same iconic hat.
  • Wild Dog from Time Crisis, and Dr. Curien from House of the Dead.
  • Tiny Mighty: clone of Marvel Mighty Heroes with expies of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Loki, The Hulk, She-Hulk, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, The Thing, Spider-Man, Sandman, Ghostrider, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Shadowcat, Beast, Wolverine, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Magneto, Hawkeye, Sabretooth, Professor X, Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Deadpool, Ms. Marvel, Rocket Raccoon, Star-Lord, Groot, Gamora, Black Bolt, Poison Ivy, The Joker, and Vampirella.
  • The diagnostician from the cast of Trauma Team is more or less Spike Spiegel. May qualify as an Expy instead, depending on just where you set the bar for "same character with serial numbers filed off dropped into a new continuity" vs. "Suspiciously similar but different character."
  • In the Ultima series, Bobbits and Balrons are clearly based on the Hobbits and the Balrog of Middle-earth. In Akalabeth, the final enemy is called a Balrog. Gazers are based on Beholders, while Fuzzies were Ewoks.
  • Unison League has Ifrit and Behemoth summons, and the Lancer class can evolve to a Dragoon class.
  • Forget that, how about Vario Kraatz from Valkyria Chronicles II? Jeez, the guy is Elvis Presley!
  • Valkyrie Crusade: Summoner with traditional Summoner horn and Carbuncle.
  • Valkyrie Profile: Mandatory party member and heavy swordsman Arngrim is Guts sans the emotional issues. Also, more than one person has noted how much Lezard Valeth seems to resemble Harry Potter.
  • Virtua Fighter: El Blaze is NOT Rey Mysterio. Rey Mysterio might be a little guy who flies around a lot in a mask and oversized pants determined to prove himself as good or better than the big guys, but he doesn't wear ribbons on his arms, after all.
    • El Fuerte just might be Mysterio, though, if Mysterio had a thing for cooking. Or he just might be Blaze, since they're both rather Large Hams. His outfit also bears more than a passing resemblance to El Místico.
  • When Wai Wai World was rereleased for Japanese mobile phones in 2006, Konami no longer had the rights to use Mikey or King Kong, so they were respectively replaced with Upa and Pentarou.
  • The entire premise of War of the Monsters is that a bunch of 50's Kaiju stand-ins (and too mechas) are fighting each other. Aside from Godzilla and King Kong we also have Mazinger Z, The Deadly Mantis, the aliens from This Island Earth among others.
  • One of the reasons why Warship Girls is despised by some KanColle players as a ripoff is due to some designs of the WSG ship girls being blatantly similar to their KanColle counterparts. Akagi and Tenryuu come to mind. Though other works' characters are also copied, like Kitakami and Ooi looking a lot like Saki and Nodoka from Saki.
  • WET seems to this for the Kill Bill films.
  • The Nintendo DS fighting game Windy X Windam has character designs that are heavily based on Guilty Gear. Big is basically Potemkin minus his gigantic gauntlet; swordsman Kirikou is Ky Kiske with fire abilities instead of lightning; and Jack and Stin are clones of Slayer and Bridget, respectively.
  • The World Heroes series has quite a few. Kim Dragon is a blatant clone of Bruce Lee. There's also a professional wrestler named Muscle Power who looked exactly like Hulk Hogan in his first appearance. They shaved off his mustache in the console releases of the first game and all the sequels, presumably so that Hogan wouldn't get any ideas about suing ADK.
  • There's a fairly strong fan case in World of Warcraft for Prince Arthas Menethil's suspicious similarity to one King Elric VIII of Melniboné. (If you played Warcraft III, you'll know it's darn near exact.)
    • And of course, Adventurer Archaeologist Harrison Jones, a one-shot NPC who receives a quick death at the start of Zul'Aman, upgraded in the next expansion to a one-shot quest NPC parodying escort quests by pretending to be escorting you instead (he got better after Zul'Aman), upgraded in the next expansion to the primary questgiver for a major plotline and an instructor for the archaeology profession in Stormwind. At no point does the game pretend he's supposed to be anything other than Indiana Jones.
      • You can find Harrison Jones in Stormwind Keep, giving a speech that is exactly word for word the same speech Indy gave in the classroom in Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the only change being the other professor's name.
  • MDickie's Wrestling MPire has a number of characters based off of real-life wrestlers. Just to name a few, you've got Brook Laser, Cabal, Ralph Zipper, Gold Boulder, Redneck Roston, Shy Mouse, Slam Dunk and Terry Dugan.
  • Mario of Super Mario Bros. fame (Known then as Jumpman) was born when Nintendo wanted to create a Popeye licensed game, but could not acquire the license. Likewise, Pauline and Donkey Kong were meant to be Olive Oyl and Bluto respectively. Ironically, after Donkey Kong became a hit, Nintendo got the license to make their own Popeye game later. Elements of Popeye would go on to influence the Super Mario Bros.. series, with the Everyman hero (Mario) empowered by a Power-Up Food (Mushroom) with an on-and-off girlfriend who is the Damsel in Distress (Princess Peach) and battling against a rival/archenemy to rescue her (Bowser).
  • Honey, I Joined a Cult is a Construction and Management Game about forming a Cult. One of the default cult options is a parody of Happy Days Arthur "the Fonz" Fonzarelli, played by Henry Winkler; giving you the Donzies, led by Martha Donzarelli and worshipping Minkler.
  • Capsule J from the original SNES version of Kirby Super Star has the same spherical body, white gloves, and cockpit "face" as TwinBee. It was so blatant that Capsule J was replaced with Capsule J2 in Kirby Super Star Ultra and Kirby Quest of Kirby Mass Attack and Capsule J3 in Kirby: Planet Robobot, both with different appearances from Capsule J.

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