Derivative Differentiation

Following the leader is ubiquitous in all media. The reasons for this vary, ranging from a desire to attain some of the success of the original work to a desire to pay homage to a work that the creator of the derivative work adores.

This technique can be quite a double-edged sword, however. Some fans stay away from such derivative works, either because they know that most imitations are bound to be bad or because the work is so similar that they feel no need to invest any time into experiencing more of the same, regardless of quality. If the derivative work is too obviously similar, it may even trigger a lawsuit from the creators of whatever work is being aped.

So creators of derivative works find ways to make later installments less derivative, either in response to fan reaction or because their storytelling skills have improved to the point that they themselves no longer have to use derivation as a crutch. The work may still have some trappings that hint at its formerly derivative nature, but it's less likely that newcomers will easily be able to discern this.

Related to Growing the Beard. Compare to Spiritual Antithesis. Has nothing to do with calculus.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Dragon Ball in its first arc was an irreverent retelling of Journey to the West (with elements of Hakkenden) that mashed up Fantasy with Science Fiction elements. The second and fourth arcs were a parody of Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (with the third arc being a possible conclusion in case the manga was canceled) with the fantasy elements from its origins left over and even more science fiction tropes. Come the seventh arc (where the anime changed names to Dragon Ball Z), the story introduces its versions of the Monkey King's "brothers" the Six-Eared Macaque, Red-Buttocked Baboon and Long-Armed Gibbon... as aliens, turning the story into a twisted version of Superman with even more science fiction tropes, and by the ninth arc the story has turned into a more supernatural take on The Terminator. Since then, Dragon Ball as a whole has become less derivative and more of its own beast. Most attempts to continue the series beyond arc ten (Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Online, Dragon Ball Super) either draw on the distinctive elements of the world it created or try to build on said world in ways that do not blatantly draw from another series, and there are several non serial movies which either rehash well known Dragon Ball plots or spin new ones out of Dragon Ball conventions.
• Gasaraki started out as a clone of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but evolved into more of a spiritual predecessor to Code Geass.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure began as a clone of Fist of the North Star (and Dracula, oddly enough). This changed with the advent of Stands, and the series drifted away from its inspiration. The eponymous Joestar line even grew progressively less like Kenshiro with each generation.
• PriPara began as Takara Tomy's version of Aikatsu!, but as the show went on and became more popular, it became an idol show that was very different from the other popular ones at the time, doing things Aikatsu! did not including a whole season based on five-person lives, different versions of the idol world in the show existing and even some concepts that are similar to Magical Girl anime such as taking care of a magical baby and the girls getting a magic wand to change their dresses.
• Pokémon and Yo-kai Watch are rival mon JRPG series where you play as a Kid Hero fighting with a team of monsters. Their anime adaptations decided to go in two completely different directions. While the Pokémon anime more-or-less adapts the games and is an action-focused series, the Yo-kai Watch anime ditches most of the game's plot in exchange for a comedic Slice of Life series about schoolboy Nate's life alongside yo-kai. The two anime became even less alike when Yo-Kai Watch ended and was replaced with the Darker and Edgier, more action-oriented spinoff Yo-kai Watch: Shadowside. Unlike the forever ten Ash, Nate grew up. The Yo-kai Watch (or rather, the role as the Yo-kai Watch Holder^note as Kaira had all Yo-kai Watches in the world to be destroyed, and only those ancient watches (originally conceived as "Mirrors") made by the Genyou were still around.) was passed onto his teenage daughter. This no longer stands as the revival Yo-kai Watch! replaced Shadowside, was latter replaced by the spin-off series Yo-kai Gakuen Y: Close Encounters of the N Kind, and then it got revived again as Yo-kai Watch♪.

Asian Animation

• Crazy Candies: The first season is notorious for copying a number of SpongeBob SquarePants episodes and jokes, so for Season 2 they largely stopped doing that apart from at least one episode. In Season 6, they gave the series a story about Marshyo and Jackey finding ingredients to cook gourmet foods for Mr. Seed - SpongeBob SquarePants didn't have any significant overarching plot like that.
• Doby & Disy: Season 2 got rid of the Fake Interactivity segments and fleshed out the character personalities to be more original than Dora the Explorer. Every season from that one onwards has its own topic to teach that isn't English (similar to how Dora teaches Spanish), such as Chinese characters, music, and problem solving.
• Flower Angel: The character personalities and the way that magical girl powers work, as well as some pieces of lore such as a Missing Mom, were similar to Cardcaptor Sakura in the first season, but in Season 2, more focus was put on the fairy world and more magical girls were put in protagonist roles alongside An'an - among other things - to correct this problem.
• Our Friend Xiong Xiao Mi could be described very easily as a Chinese ripoff of Peppa Pig, with its similar art style and the main character living in a house on a grassy hill and going on simple adventures with his animal friends. The second season, A Little Artist Xiong Xiao Mi, has an educational element Peppa Pig didn't have - teaching viewers how to draw animals.

Comic Books

• In his first appearance, the Bat-Man was pretty much The Shadow with wings, with a bit of Zorro mixed in as well. Then he got his own backstory, decided he didn't like guns, recruited a kid sidekick, and generally became his own person.
• Similarly, Green Arrow, was straight-up Batman (that is, the guy Batman had become by then.) Rich playboy, check; Arrowcave and Arrowcar (yes, they were really called that) to go with the Batcave and Batmobile, check; red-clad Kid Sidekick adopted by the hero, check; every single gadget Batman is known for but with an arrow theme instead of a bat theme, check. He became his own person by becoming more playboyish and more political, and seldom becoming quite as isolated and brooding as Batman even when his stories were just as dark.
• Martian Manhunter is an alien hero with a cool cape, a ton of powers that can vary from "ten humans could probably do the same thing" to "could take out the Death Star with his pinky" levels Depending on the Writer, one thing that can weaken him, and is sometimes the Last of His Kind. That doesn't remind you of anyone, does it? This results in a lot of writers not knowing what to do with him, but in many versions, the reason he and Superman aren't the same character is all down to personality - dead-serious (sometimes The Comically Serious), sometimes more overtly "alien" with a more formal way of talking, using his shapeshifting powers to maintain multiple human identities while his true self is definitely his hero persona (it's been a very long time since Clark Kent was considered just a disguise to let Superman find out about crimes before the general public) and, if Justice League and Supergirl (2015) are any indication, more comfortable giving orders. Even in the beginning, their stories were quite different, with a greater focus on detective work. In any work where they appear together, the only thing Ma and Pa Kent's farmboy and the imposing alien soldier will probably have in common is "likes capes."
• Deadpool used to be Deathstroke in red until they made him insane to the point of fourth wall–breaking and gave him his own fighting style. Interestingly enough, Deadpool also qualifies as an Inversion of this trope in that he held onto an element that his inspiration has since discarded. Namely, he keeps wearing leather and spandex whereas Deathstroke has undergone Costume Evolution into a more armored appearance.
• The lead character of Peter David's Fallen Angel was widely assumed to be a lawyer-friendly version of Supergirl from his recently completed series, but was eventually distinguished.
• In PS238, many of the background superheroes are obvious walking shout-outs. For example, Ron's father Atlas is obviously Superman, down to being raised by an older couple on a farm... until it's discovered that, to his own surprise, he's not the Last of His Kind, he's a Hidden Backup Prince. His personality also winds up being rather different as he becomes more aloof and distant from his family, culminating in a divorce from Ron's mom and him taking the throne of his home planet.
• The pirates in Asterix started off as straight-up redraws of the characters from Barbe-Rouge, apart from art style. Notably, in some of Baba's early appearances, he looks almost exactly like the original, photorealistic one, apart from bright-red lips. Then one of them, Erix, got removed from the crew, and the remaining crew got increasingly grotesqued until they all ended up looking really different to their original inspiration, especially Baba.
• India has a large and thriving comic-book industry, largely depending on original superhero characters such as Nagraj and Shaktimaan. American icons such as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman have crossed over to Indian comics - but not always in a licenced and approved way. In unauthorised versions, the Indian Superman takes sadistic pleasure in dreaming up prolonged and painful deaths for the villain, while the normally chaste Wonder Woman^note the character as originally created had a lot of bondage/discipline elements, but the erotic aspects of that were kept as subtext... a lot of subtext, but still subtext is allowed active sexual expression (within the limits of Indian moral attitudes). Meanwhile, Shaktimaan crossed over to American comics, but as a minor character representing India in a sort of international League of Superheroes. His portrayal in the American adaptation similarly changed to reflect American taste.
• X-Men started out as a pretty naked copy of Fantastic Four: they had matching uniforms and origins, the team included a goof with element powers, a rough-edged strongman, a serious-minded genius leader, and a profoundly useless woman, they battled a cloaked Large Ham archvillain, and there was an emphasis on the group being unpopular in society as they went on weird science adventures. After the revamp of Giant-Size X-Men, the team more or less went its own way: the matching uniforms vanished, the roster changed significantly and many characters were altered (particularly Magneto, who went from a cackling loon to an Anti-Hero), and the series developed its signature focus on prejudice and soap opera dramatics.
• The Thing and The Incredible Hulk were originally very similar characters; it's been suggested that the Hulk was created because Lee recognized that Ben Grimm was the most interesting member of the team. Both were created by a scientific accident, both were physically monstrous and super-strong, both wore little clothing, both were violent and antiheroic outcasts, both would frequently turn into a regular human, and both sought a means of turning back to normal permanently. However, in an odd case of this trope, it was the original one, the Thing, who did most of the differentiating: he stopped turning back into a human, went through Character Development, and became far more of a well-adjusted and well-connected Boisterous Bruiser, with his monstrousness being downplayed to the point of being almost cuddly and beloved among the populace (though he's still unhappy about his appearance at times). The Hulk, meanwhile, mostly just kept the monstrous traits, dialed down his intellect from "thuggish" to "Hulk Speak", and added a connection to rage (causing his transformations and increasing his strength) to tie his abilities together.
• Alan Moore's run on Miracleman (previously called Marvelman) is a famous example. The series was originally created by Mick Anglo in the mid-1950s as a blatant British clone of the popular American superhero comic Captain Marvel, which had recently been temporarily cancelled at the time due to legal difficulties. Much later, Moore famously revived it in the 1980s as a shockingly grim deconstruction of the superhero genre written for an adult audience, which could perhaps best be described as "Captain Marvel retold as a horror story". Beyond the tonal shift, he also took the premise and core characters in a noticeably different direction, allowing the series to establish more of an identity of its own. In addition to being a deconstruction of the original series, Moore's run is also a sequel taking place after a decades-long Time Skip, allowing the Kid Hero Micky Moran to become a married adult man, and allowing his sidekick Kid Marvelman to undergo a truly disturbing Face–Heel Turn. It also retcons his origin story, revealing that he actually got his superpowers from a secret government experiment called "Project Zarathustra".

Film

• The 1954 film Gojira had plenty of unique elements to set it apart from the earlier Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever stories which inspired it such as King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The use of People in Rubber Suits instead of Stop Motion to portray Godzilla was unusual at the time, while the grim, allegorical destruction of Tokyo and the then-unique-in-The '50s anti-nuclear message could only have come from post-Hiroshima Japan. Nonetheless, it still clearly followed the formula set by those other giant monster movies: monster causes havoc in a city, humans brainstorm a way to stop it, and the monster is thus killed, imprisoned, or otherwise neutralized. Godzilla Raids Again and King Kong vs. Godzilla barely diverged from this formula by introducing other monsters to both fight Godzilla and cause more trouble for humans. Mothra vs. Godzilla saw the beginnings of major divergences from the formula both by turning the Godzilla films into a Shared Universe with other Toho creations (starting with Mothra) and having at least one of the monsters being clearly on the side of the humans. Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster saw the biggest divergence yet, turning Godzilla into a good guy and having him team up with other monsters against a greater threat. Since then, the franchise's focus has usually been on Godzilla doing most of the work to take down the bad guys while humans help him out.
• Gamera began his life as a very obvious cash-in on the success of Godzilla. Exactly like Godzilla (1954), Giant Monster Gamera has a giant reptilian monster with a fiery Breath Weapon awakened by a nuclear blast and then destroys Tokyo while the humans try to stop him, although while Godzilla was a little more grounded, Gamera was a little more out-of-the-box, being able to fly with rocket jets and instead of being killed, he's trapped in a rocket and sent to Mars. The sequel, Gamera vs. Barugon, continued this copy-cat trend as it's basically Godzilla Raids Again with the Serial Numbers Filed Off, although again, with a slightly more outlandish monster. The Showa films following Gamera vs. Gyaos started diverging further, for better or for worse, aiming more towards children, having a strictly Monster of the Week formula, and a lighter sci-fi tone, while Godzilla went all over the place in tone and plot. By the Heisei series, the two series diverged even more. Godzilla maintained his atomic origins, but lost his heroic nature, becoming a neutral monster that humanity was often forced to ally with against even worse monsters, but ultimately still antagonistic. Gamera meanwhile kept his heroic nature but lost his nuclear origin, continuing his more fantastical sci-fi themes. While Godzilla ended up having a large Rogues Gallery and allied kaiju which reappear again and again, Gamera has almost never had an opponent appear twice in a film (with the sole exception of Gyaos) and never acquired any kaiju allies.

Literature

• The Beginning After the End is heavily based on Mushoku Tensei with its premise, story elements, and characters being lifted nearly wholesale from that novel, especially in its first few volumes. However, over time it becomes far Darker and Edgier compared to its inspiration given how its plot revolves around a Divine Conflict and as such has very high stakes for an Isekai novel, if not being one of the darkest works in the entire genre. The novel is not shy from showing the horrors of war and its toll on the protagonists, features some truly despicable villains whom the protagonists have difficulty overcoming, and makes liberal use of Anyone Can Die.
  • Even though it continues to lift a few elements from the latter in said later volumes - such as the protagonist meeting people from his past life, the enigmatic deity who helps the protagonist turning out to be Evil All Along, and the protagonist learning that he is a Paradox Person due to the circumstances of his reincarnation involving a Stable Time Loop - it gives these elements a much different execution, oftentimes to a much darker extreme.
    • For example (involving the first of these), when Rudeus meets Nanahoshi, he's shocked to see her as not only was she one of the students he died saving, but she had been the companion of Orsted who had punched a hole in Rudeus's chest the last time they met. However, Nanahoshi proves to pose no harm to him as she only wants to return home. In stark contrast, Arthur learns that the Big Bad Agrona had not only reincarnated him but also his past life childhood friends - Nico and Cecilia - whom he had Reforged into a Minion and twisted them into despising Arthur for an incident in their past lives.
  • To elaborate on its protagonist, Arthur himself seems to be a carbon copy of Rudeus at first - both are adult men who died only to Reincarnate in Another World, became a extremely talented mage and adventurer at a young age thanks to retaining their past mindset, and attract the attention of several Love Interests - with the only initial major difference being that Arthur is a Celibate Hero who spurns most girls due to the mental age gap in sharp contrast to the perverted Manchild that is Rudeus at first. However, Arthur diverges considerably from Rudeus as the story progresses. While Rudeus ends up becoming The Archmage who expands on his original powerset, Arthur is a Magic Knight who ends up losing his original powerset only to Re-Power himself with an even stronger powerset and Come Back Strong.
  • While its inspiration does have its fair share of dark moments, most notably Turning Point IV wherein Rudeus learns of the Bad Future in which he becomes a monster and loses everyone he loves thanks to falling for Hitogami's machinations, the novel itself tends to have far more dark moments, and ones that happen in real time if not in the past. Case in point, from Volumes 7 to 8 the main cast - Arthur and Tessia in particular - undergo a massive Trauma Conga Line wherein The Bad Guy Wins, conquers their homeland and kills many of their loved ones. On top of that, Arthur gets stranded in an alien land, left powerless, and forced to live incognito among Agrona's minions, while Tessia gets captured and turned into the vessel for Cecilia as part of Agrona's plan followed by her homeland being destroyed by the Jerkass Gods in an ultimately futile bid to stop Agrona.
• The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino effectively repeats The Adventures of Pinocchio for the first few pages, but then starts diverging until a complete breakoff after the A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted scene.
• The first two books of the Inheritance Cycle took place in a very by-the-numbers High Fantasy world, with each and every single one of its distinguishing features being lifted from some other fantasy book, and the plots of the two books being nearly beat-by-beat recreations of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Not only did Trilogy Creep kick in and split the third book into two, but the final two books greatly expanded the world into genuinely original directions, and a plotline with much less than the expected adherence to Return of the Jedi.
• The Lord of the Rings is so very much the 800-pound gorilla of High Fantasy that any work in that genre written since is going to be compared with it (and with J. R. R. Tolkien's other works), for better or worse. Still, the... influence... is pretty visible in some works.
  • The Shannara series started off as fairly derivative of The Lord of the Rings, with the largest distinction being the former's After the End setting. The Sword of Shannara even took its general plot structure straight from The Lord of the Rings. As the series went on, however, the books developed more original plots, including an Urban Fantasy trilogy.
  • If you only read the first novel of The Wheel of Time you could be forgiven for dismissing it as The Lord of the Rings with some light gender politics. The setting and metaphysics become much more distinct, and the gender politics much more pronounced, as the series continues.
• The early books in the Sword of Truth series were typical High Fantasy books that borrowed many elements from The Wheel of Time (itself somewhat derivative of LotR), but developed a unique feel in Soul of the Fire with the introduction of Objectivist themes.
• Tales of the Magic Land started off as a loose translation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but later books in the series are original works that use said translation as a basis.

Live-Action TV

• The Russian version of Married... with Children recycled all the scripts from all 11 American seasons and then had a contest for suggestions to write more.
• The Russian version of The Nanny was so popular that the producers actually hired the original American writers to write 25 more episodes.
• The first twelve episodes of The Office (US) were simply reworkings of the scripts of the British version, and not very well received. Then they ran out of source material, and once the US series found a voice of its own many of the characters were completely unrecognisable (particularly Michael Scott, who became much more of a well-intentioned buffoon than the venal and unpleasant David Brent), which created a lot of Early-Installment Weirdness in the first season.
• Likewise, the first season of Parks and Recreation was very much The Office in the public sector with a female lead. Starting in the second season the show dropped its reliance on Cringe Comedy and found its own identity.
• In America, ABC piloted a 1980 Harvey Korman vehicle, Snavely's, which was not only based on the BBC's Fawlty Towers but said pilot was a scene-by-scene word-by-word duplicate of a Fawlty Towers episode. It would be tweaked and be greenlit for series under the new name Amanda's (with Bea Arthur in the John Cleese role).

Music

• This trope is common in general with a fair number of enduringly popular musicians, who generally begin their careers heavily borrowing from either music that they admire or music that happens to be commercially successful at around the start of their career. However, as time goes on they begin to craft a better sense of identity for themselves, oftentimes drawing in influences from other musicians and/or genres and organically melding them in with their old style to form something more distinct (when they don't just undergo a complete Genre Shift, that is).
• The Beatles began their careers aping rock 'n' roll artists such as Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, and Chuck Berry, whose music had become popular in Liverpool thanks to import records. However, as time went on, the band incorporated greater influences from World Music, Classical Music, and the burgeoning psychedelia and Avant-Garde Music scenes, developing a more psychedelic-symphonic sound that would come to define much of their most famous work.
• Similarly to the Beatles, David Bowie's early work was an audible imitation of 1950's American rock 'n' roll (owing to the work of Little Richard being Bowie's inspiration for becoming a musician), and his first two albums respectively took noticeable cues from art hall pop and folk rock. However, starting with The Man Who Sold the World in 1970, his work would take on a much more unconventional and theatrical edge, which would continue on in many different forms throughout the remainder of his career.
• Depeche Mode's early career was simply spent imitating the teen-oriented brand of Synth-Pop that was becoming popular in the early 80's, with their first two albums lacking much to let the band stand out from their peers despite their own success. However, songwriter Martin Gore's growing interest in industrial rock and the band's acquisition of a Synclavier led to third and fourth albums taking on a brand of Alternative Dance distinctly harder and more mechanical than that of other bands in the movement, with Depeche Mode increasingly orienting themselves in a more Gothic and melodramatic direction as their careers went on.
• Joy Division began their career as an imitator of The Sex Pistols, with rough, terse Punk Rock that distinguished itself solely through Ian Curtis' abstract and poetic lyrics. However, upon singing onto Factory Records and joining forces with batshit insane genius producer Martin Hannett, the band developed a more cavernous, minimalistic sound that would become the Trope Codifier for British Post-Punk, with their second and final album Closer in particular being intensely far-removed from any semblance of punk and featuring a more hauntingly primeval sound.
  • After Joy Division renamed themselves New Order in the wake of Curtis' 1980 suicide, the band initially attempted to simply continue what they started with their debut album Movement often being described as a sonic continuation of Closer. However, ambivalent reactions from fans and critics (at first) led the band to distance themselves from their past, eventually finding a niche in a distinctly Gothic mix of Synth-Pop and Alternative Rock that would lead to the band becoming the Trope Makers for Alternative Dance.
• Both Michael Jackson and Prince started out their adult solo careers drawing from the disco boom of the late 1970's (Jackson had been doing traditional pop as a solo musician since the age of 14, but his first work as an adult artist wouldn't be until Off the Wall in 1979); both musicians later crafted their own unique brands of pop once the 80's came around, with Jackson bringing in R&B influences and Prince drawing from a combination of Synth-Pop and funk (codifying the "Minneapolis Sound" in the process). Both artists' work would continue to grow exponentially further apart from one another and from their previous work as time went on, to the point where those accustomed to the singers' later work will be surprised to learn that they were both standard disco artists once upon a time.
• Machine Girl first drew attention during the rave revival and footwork trends of the 2010s. Album by album, they began to distinguish themselves by fusing their previous sound with punk rock and grindcore style instrumentation.
• KFC Murder Chicks began as a clear homage to rock-rave crossover music, drawing from Machine Girl and The Prodigy. It wasn't until Loss Prevention Reloaded and KFCMC that they began differentiating themselves by taking elements from breakcore and black metal.
• When Radiohead first put out Pablo Honey in 1993, one of the most common reactions to the album was that it did little to make itself stand out, being seen as just another grunge album whose only real highlight was the widely successful "Creep". The band's next two albums, meanwhile, would take on a much more unique sound that brought Alternative Rock in a more brooding direction that resulted in Radiohead leading the rock zeitgeist rather than riding its coattails. When the band realized this and immediately grew to resent it, they shook their sound up further with the electronic Post-Rock of Kid A and Amnesiac, developing their own brand of experimental art rock that would come to define their later output.
• Talk Talk managed to pull this off to a surprisingly dramatic and effective degree, given that their studio backlog consists of just five albums within the span of less than a decade. Beginning their careers as stock Synth-Pop artists whose first two albums were frequently accused by the press of ripping off Duran Duran, the band radically shifted sound to an organic and elaborate art pop sound with their third album, The Colour of Spring, in 1986. The band then took this multiple steps further in quick succession, with the jazzy Post-Rock of Spirit of Eden in 1988 and Laughing Stock in 1991, the latter of which was practically its predecessor but exaggerated. Comparing their first album to their fifth, and it can be difficult to tell that they're both by the same band.
• 10,000 Maniacs began their career as a stock Post-Punk band, playing Gang of Four and Joy Division covers before imitating that sound on their Human Conflict Number 5 EP. Once the band began putting out proper studio albums, they shifted direction to an Alternative Rock sound that melded together elements of Jangle Pop, Folk Music, and pop rock, a far cry from their more abrasive early sound and a shift that contributed heavily to their commercial success during the waning years of the pre-Nevermind era of alternative rock.

Role-Playing Games

• Dino Attack RPG started off as a near-clone of Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG in a different setting, but eventually adopted its own unique style starting with the introduction of the Story Arc formula.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000 used to just be Warhammer with space ships before adding its own mythos and creatures.
  • Although this has zigzagged quite a bit. Early on, there was a lot of effort to differentiate the two, with Warhammer 40,000 having several races killed off or quietly forgotten about while others with no connection to Warhammer Fantasy were introduced. But later, the two drifted back together with the Necrons turning into expies of the Tomb Kings, and ultimately with the events that killed off Fantasy and replaced it with Warhammer: Age of Sigmar being exactly paralleled in 40K. As of Age of Sigmar and 8th edition 40K, the two are less differentiated than at any time since their original launch.
  • For that matter, while it was never a straight copy, earliest versions of Warhammer Fantasy had parts obviously cribbed from Tolkien's Legendarium or Dungeons & Dragons. The Wood Elves, living in a forest just one letter short of "Lorien", needed a few editions to gradually move away from (ironically enough) the elves of Mirkwood.
• In its original manga appearance, Yu-Gi-Oh! was very clearly a simplified Bland-Name Product version of Magic: The Gathering with the mana system taken out, down to being named "Magic and Wizards" and borrowing a few creature designs. As it moved from a one-off game to a focus of the plot, it started showing off more and more elements that had no roots in Magic, such as Trap cards and various means of monster-summoning that used other monsters as resources. Yu-Gi-Oh! GX further shifted the game's art direction towards anime-esque Science Fantasy as opposed to Magic's D&D-esque Standard Fantasy Setting, and placed a greater focus on archetypes, or small groups of cards that share a part of their name. Another major differentiation came due to Yu-Gi-Oh lacking the rotation format that Magic uses, meaning that it sees a significantly greater level of Power Creep. Nowadays, the only thing the two games have in common is that they're both competitive card games with a fantasy theme.

Video Games

• SNK's Art of Fighting was perceived by gamers to be a cheap cash-in of rival company Capcom's Street Fighter. Despite this, Art of Fighting set itself apart by introducing several new gameplay mechanics such as taunting, the addition of a spirit gauge to regulate use of specials, along with Supers and Desperation Attacks. The game's scaling feature also became a series trademark. Capcom later incorporated some of these same features, beginning with Super Street Fighter II Turbo, the first game in the series to feature Super Combos and a secondary meter for regulating them. Street Fighter IV would then add its own revenge moves in the form of Ultra Combos, which can only be used after the character has sustained enough damage, making them the SF equivalent of Desperation Attacks.
• Banjo-Kazooie never tried to hide its similarities to Super Mario 64, but fans didn't mind too much because the game was pretty good anyway. As gamers started to get tired of the Collect-a-Thon Platformer formula set up by Super Mario 64, however, Rare decided to go in a different direction with Banjo-Tooie. The sequel contained more interconnected areas to make it resemble a Metroidvania more than anything. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts abandoned the Platform Game trappings altogether, introducing customizable vehicles as the central gameplay concept instead.
• The original Burnout was extremely similar to the arcade game Thrill Drive in all respects, to the point it was pratically a Spiritual Adaptation of it. Burnout 2 differentiated itself with a more definite art direction and a greatly increased focus on the Nitro Boost mechanic; Burnout 3: Takedown further shook things up by introducing the combat mechanic that would define the series for mainstream audiences.
• Similar to the Ratchet & Clank example below, Rare created Conker, in hopes of making another exploration-heavy series with platforming and collection sidequests starring a cute protagonist. After their rivals mocked the company for seeming to create another formulaic series, they kept the gameplay but reinvented the product as Conker's Bad Fur Day, completely changing the tone from a cutesy mascot with clean, shiny graphics to a deliberately unappealing, profanity-ridden Black Comedy with a protagonist that talked, and wasn't at all shy about voicing his displeasure about the rivers of feces, frequent hangovers, alien invasions, a suicidal fork with a bad sex life, the giant poop monster that sang opera tunes, and any number of surreal and definitely not child-friendly madness the game had to offer.
• Nintendo's Donkey Kong arcade game was born out of this kind of serendipity; Nintendo, still trying to get their foot in the American game market in 1981, tried releasing a standard Space Invaders clone called Radar Scope in the arcades; while it did well overseas, it completely flopped in the US and left them stuck with thousands of unsold cabinets. This prompted them to place Shigeru Miyamoto in charge of improvising another game to replace Radar Scope (while converting the unsold cabinets into new games) and, instead of making another cookie cutter Shoot 'Em Up or Maze Game, created one of the earliest,^note but not the first; Space Panic from 1980, is generally considered the first platformer game and certainly one of the most important platformer games in history. The game was originally conceived as a Popeye title, but changed when Nintendo couldn't secure the rights: Popeye became Mario, Olive Oyl became Pauline, and Bluto became Donkey Kong.
• Final Fantasy is a shameless clone of the 1st edition of Dungeons & Dragons, right down to copying practically every monster design from D&D's bestiary. Beginning with Final Fantasy II, though, the series began to craft its own identity.
• The Giana Sisters series has had this occur. The Great Giana Sisters was such a blatant clone of Super Mario Bros. that Nintendo successfully got it removed from store shelves (putting a very arrogant Take That! to Mario on the cover hurt the game far more than it helped). When Giana Sisters DS came out decades later, it was nothing like Super Mario Bros., and later Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams came along and introduced mechanics such as Dual-World Gameplay and heavier emphasis on melee abilities. Numerous critics noted the irony that a game that started off as a knock-off ended up being revived on a Nintendo platform then later becoming one of the most original platform games of 2013.
• The first Halo game, Halo: Combat Evolved, was initially planned as a Real-Time Strategy. Between that preliminary design and the release of the final product, however, Bungie probably deemed a RTS with humans fighting alien zealots and both fending off a parasitic swarm to be a tad bit too similar to StarCraft, hence the shift to a First-Person Shooter. They would eventually revisit the RTS roots with Halo Wars.
• K.C. Munchkin! for the Magnavox Odyssey²; the first installment is an obvious clone of Pac-Man (although there are a fair amount of differences between it and its inspiration already, most notably the ability to create your own maze), enough that a year after it was released, Atari, who had just released their own port for the 2600, successfully sued to get it pulled from shelves. To continue the series, a sequel, K Cs Crazy Chase, was released, which redesigned the lead character, and revamped the gameplay to where your goal is to chase and eat a giant centipede throughout the maze to get power ups and win (not only distinguishing it from Pac Man, but also serving as a sly jab at Atari). It also supports the Odyssey 2 voice module.
• SNK did it again, this time with a specific character of The King of Fighters - in his debut in The King of Fighters 2001, K9999 was basically almost identical to AKIRA's Tetsuo Shima, to the extent that everybody attributed subsequent attempts to outright deny his existence to legal pressure from Katsuhiro Otomo. 20 years and one rebranding to Krohnen later in The King of Fighters XV, K9999 appears far more unique, both in design (Barbarian Longhair, goggles and Scarf of Asskicking) and in powers (bye bye flesh arm and psychokinesis, hello flames and cybernetics).
• League of Legends took the simplification path after breaking away from Defense of the Ancients. The old Warcraft III main stat system was removed and replaced with direct manipulation of the underlying stats: attack damage, ability power, attack speed, movement speed, HP, mana, armor and magic resist. The standard ability kit of three powers and an ultimate was replaced by one passive, three abilities with or without passives, and an ultimate. The "Blue Pill", the equivalent of DotA's Town Portal Scroll, was removed and made into a long Recall that can be performed any time without limits. The Blink Dagger and the Ancient Pocket Watch were made into the summoner spells Flash and Teleport. Then the champions started to be designed around the standard roles of tank, fighter, mage, marksman, assassin and support—six roles, as opposed to DotA's hard carry, soft carry, disabler, support, lane support, initiator, jungler, durable, nuker, pusher and escaper. The barracks were replaced by inhibitors that regenerate over time. Roshan was replaced by Baron Nashor, which is much stronger and usually requires at least three champions at late game to be killed. Other mechanics such as creep denying, neutral creep luring, hit dodging, turn rate or terrain height were removed. The result? After these and much more differentiation changes, Blizzard decided that League of Legends was different enough to not count as a derivative work—unlike Dota 2, which put Valve into a trademark scuffle with Blizzard on account of being basically Defense of the Ancients on the Source engine, with Serial Numbers Filed Off, and a few cursory mechanic changes.
• The Len'en series started out with Touhou Project clones, but started to differentiate itself with Brilliant Pagoda or Haze Castle, which has a different structure with several novel mechanics like the "cell system" with randomized battles and the ability to choose routes depending on your horizontal position during a cell. The upcoming Book of the Cafe and Monochrome World aren't even going to be shoot 'em ups.
• The Metal Gear series was initially just a tongue-in-cheek take-off of American spy and action films, but Metal Gear Solid was where the series started to establish its own identity of having long-winded, cinematic cutscenes with melodramatic war stories with an everything and the kitchen sink mentality (as the Sequel Displacement can attest to). Although the impact is greatly lost due to it being on the dated MSX2, even Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake dealt with themes and questions such as what happens to soldiers once they've left the battlefield, and what happened to the local survivors of a war zone when it turns out neither side has particularly good intentions.
• Notedrop started out as a straight clone of DJMAX Trilogy, but then started deviating to become its own game by removing Fever mode, adding "shift" modes that put extra keys into each column, and changing the scoring formula to be based entirely on the timing of note hits, with no combo-based elements.
• Pump It Up is infamous for being DanceDanceRevolution but with an inverted panel setup (diagonals and center panel, as opposed to DDR's cardinal directions), to the point where it's been accused of ribbing DDR. However as time has passed, the dev team have made strides to differentiate it from its four-panel rival, with heavy use of gimmicky Nintendo Hard charts with looser timing windows to make up for it, variable number of songs per credit (longer songs means less songs per credit, while shorter songs do the opposite), extensive use of K-pop songs, a more open approach to songs having multiple charts (wherein basically, each song can have as many charts as the developers want and charts are named by type and difficulty level rather than something more rigid like DDR's Basic-Difficult-Expert-Challenge), Co-Op Multiplayer charts where players may cross over to each other's side or even three to five players play at the same time, and the publishing company's effort to release the games worldwide as opposed to keeping them restricted to a select few countries.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • According to an interview with Insomniac Games head Ted Price, after making a trilogy of collect-a-thon games in the vein of Super Mario 64 and its many other imitators, they realized yet another game like that would be a dead end in the long run, so for the first game, they tried to start playing up the combat aspects of the game over just jumping around and collecting things, and they even tried to avoid calling it a platformer in development (which didn't stop critics from calling it one anyway).
  • The sequels would continue playing up the combat aspects over the platforming even more and more, to the point where games like Ratchet: Deadlocked have little to no platforming at all, and even the 2016 reimagining of the first game plays up the combat over the platforming.
• The first trio of Robopon games were blatantly riding the coattails of Pokémon Red and Blue, with monster/robot collecting, similar battle styles, beating a series of "legends" who bore no small resemblance to Gym Leaders, and multiple versions. The sequel kept the version system, but made substantial changes, like making battles party based, making it so that players could not catch Robopon, but had to create them, and taking the plot completely Off the Rails.
• Saints Row started out as a pretty straightforward Grand Theft Auto clone, with the only caveat being Saint's Row's focus on gang violence. Each game has dialed up the Denser and Wackier aspects (Saints Row IV even features an Alien Invasion), with Grand Theft Auto IV dialing down the same. Putting Grand Theft Auto IV side by side with Saints Row: The Third shows that the two now bear very little resemblance to one another, aside from the gameplay involved stealing cars.
• The first two installments of Sidewinder were heavily derivative of Ace Combat, their main point of differentiation being features that weren't in the first Ace Combat (such as analog controls, cockpit view, landing sequences, and the ability to equip different type of missiles) and minor concessions toward realism. Sidewinder MAX shifted the flight model toward realism, and the last two installments (titled Lethal Skies in the west) changed the setting from the present to a futuristic, post-global warming Earth.
• After Sega tried to directly compete with Nintendo by copying the NES with their Sega Master System, only to fall flat on their face, they decided to go in the opposite direction and become Nintendo's antithesis with the Sega Genesis, aiming for older audiences and darker games with slicker graphics, action and very lax censorship policies. Even their headlining mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, was a unique contrast from the Mario series in art and gameplay, and also a contrast to Sega's own Mario-derivative Alex Kidd, who was quickly abandoned by the company. Unsurprisingly, it worked. The series was unmistakably inspired by Super Mario Bros., but in contrast to Mario's strategic, defensive platforming, Sonic's gameplay usually leans more towards fast-paced action, heavily streamlined platforming romps with rollercoaster/pinball-like physics and level design that emphasized maintaining speed and precision timing more than anything else, with the occasional slower platforming, combat, puzzles and mini-games sandwiched in.
• Having also been made by Squaresoft, Super Mario RPG naturally has a lot in common with Final Fantasy games and other Square RPGs of that era, albeit with Action Commands and the obvious Super Mario Bros. trappings among other things. After Square partnered with Sony and left the Mario RPGs in Nintendo's hands, however, they gave its Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games a different focus from typical Square RPGs, such as a much heavier use of intricate Action Commands, simplified battle stat calculations, fewer party members on screen at a time, and Pre Existing Encounters with enemies that can be attacked for some damage at the beginning of a battle. Super Paper Mario in particular is a mix between a platformer and a traditional Role-Playing Game.
• Inverted with Bombshell and Ion Fury. The games were created out of an idea originally floated for Duke Nukem Forever, that being Duke meeting a Distaff Counterpart to himself named Shelly Harrison, which didn't pan out because when Gearbox got their hands on the game with the intent of actually releasing it, the character of Bombshell was off-limits. When she got her own game, it took the form of a top-down shooter/RPG, genres Duke Nukem has never ventured into; when that game then got a prequel, the developers instead decided to wholly embrace her origins as a counterpart to Duke by making a first-person shooter that plays almost exactly like Duke Nukem 3D, down to even running on the same engine.
• Streets of Rage started as a Final Fight clone with three characters that mostly played the same. Only differing in speed, strength, and power. The only other standout was the techno/house and hip-hop inspired soundtrack from Yuzo Kushiro. It wasn't until 2 that series found its footing, and each sequel would model themselves after the second game. Each character having their own unique moves, the staple Blitz Attacks, Special Attacks, and the heavier uses of Ki Attacks.
• Tower of Fantasy started off as a a MMORPG game likely inspired by Genshin Impact and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild but is set in an Post Cyber Punk Scavenger World closer in feel to Borderlands, compared to its inspirations which are single player games set in a High Fantasy world. But there were so many similar aspects between the game and Genshin that there was controversy of the game being a Genshin rip-off from numerous gamers and game journalists early on. Updates starting in "2.0" began focusing on the cyberpunk and MMORPG aspects, slowly helping it distance itself from its inspirations and creating its own identity.

Webcomics

• 8-Bit Theater was an admitted attempt to Follow the Leader with Bob and George, but as time went on, ditched many of those elements. Things like blatant pop-culture references and Author Guest Spots became less frequent before disappearing entirely. By the time the comic ended it elicited more comparisons with The Order of the Stick (being a RPG-spoofing webcomic starring dysfunctional heroes each associated with a class) than anything else.
• Drowtales started off as the author Kern drawing up the events of the Dungeons & Dragons RP he and his friends were playing in the Forgotten Realms setting. By Chapter 4, however, the plot had diverged so much from its source material that he decided to just turn it into its own unique setting. He even went on to completely redo the earlier chapters twice to make them better fit the divergent setting.
• Even though it wasn't a stick figure comic to begin with, it's easy to see that Our Little Adventure is pretty heavily inspired by The Order of the Stick. In 235 pages (and counting), Our Little Adventure's style has changed fairly considerably, both in character design and setting design.
• The Way of the Metagamer also began as an The Order of the Stick ripoff, even copying a strip word-for-word. It starts to diverge after the Series Hiatus, when the Author Avatar makes an appearance, and by the time Trope-tan shows up the storyline is completely different. As for that one strip copied verbatim, it is now an Old Shame, which the creator lampshaded like with almost everything else in the comic.

Web Original

• Tribe Twelve started off as a largely forgettable Marble Hornets clone, but eventually found its own voice after the funeral submission, especially in "Night Recordings."
• SCP Foundation: Earlier versions of SCP-582 (A Bundle of Stories) made Bundle extremely similar to the Slender Man. Later versions distanced the description away from the resemblances. For example, the first version had its origins being an early-2000s internet phenomena, and the current version has its origins being the creation of an obscure American 1940-50s Lovecraftian author.
• The webseries AI Builds^note AI here stands for "Animal Investigator" intentionally uses this in service of a Metafiction narrative about mental illness and originality in art. The series follows Nicholas, the developer of an upcoming in-universe game known as Animal Investigator which was inspired by another in-universe game known as Animal Police. Nicholas' brother, Josh, previously created a knock-off of Animal Police and then uploaded a webseries of it to screw with Nicholas in his development of Animal Investigator. Out-of-universe, this webseries actually exists and was made by the real-life creator of AI Builds as an Affectionate Parody of Petscop, with the name "Animal Police" (And by extension "Animal Investigator") even being a direct spin on "Pets Cop." In-universe, Nicholas, who had a fragile mental state to begin with, deeply struggles with the perceived inadequacy of Animal Investigator and frequently criticizes himself for not being original enough. His game in-universe is scathingly mocked online for being a ripoff of Animal Police and various Youtubers tell him to "put more of himself" into the game, pressuring Nicholas to re-live his own trauma for the sake of making a more original product. Consequentially the series progressively spirals into a full-on Creator Breakdown, becoming less about the game itself and more about Nicholas and his struggles with trauma, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation as gameplay footage gradually devolves into Nicholas' own traumatic hallucinations. All that is to say, AI Builds is a character study that exists as a Stealth Sequel to an Affectionate Parody of Petscop and is intentionally similar to Petscop as a form of Reality Subtext to reflect the protagonist's insecurity over his work's perceived lack of originality.

Western Animation

• The Looney Tunes prior to the mid to late '30s started off as standard gag and music cartoons in the vein of other studios of its day, such as Fleischer Studios and Mickey Mouse (the latter being the most understandable connection, since the early Looney Tunes were made by former Disney artists in the first place). By the 1933–1935 period, the studio really tried hard to imitate Disney's cutesy cartoons, but that got them nowhere. By 1936, Tex Avery and Frank Tashlin (and eventually Bob Clampett) got their place in the studio as directors and slowly started leading them into a more humorous direction. Early entries of theirs such as I Love to Singa and Now That Summer is Gone superficially resemble the cutesy stuff Disney was doing, but their humor and tone was unmistakably irreverent, street smart and contemporary for their time. By the 1940s (especially by the end of World War II), the studio finally crystallized its art style, rich cast of characters, and brand of humor into its iconic form.
• Per word of Stephen Hillenburg, a big reason SpongeBob SquarePants is centered around SpongeBob as a central character as opposed to having a hard-set duo billed was because at the time the show was created, buddy shows like Ren & Stimpy were very popular, and Stephen wanted to do something different.

Other

• BBV Productions:
  • The Direct to Video sci-fi series The Stranger featured Doctor Who star Colin Baker as a mysterious stranger obviously based on the Doctor. Over the course of the series, the character's backstory was revealed, distinguishing him from the Doctor in the process.
  • BBV's follow-up audio series, featuring Baker's successor Sylvester McCoy and his co-star Sophie Aldred, did all its differentiation in a single unsubtle lump, to avoid the onset of legal trouble arising from the fact that its leads were practically indistinguishable from the roles McCoy and Aldred had played in Doctor Who.

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