Expy - Television Tropes & Idioms

"The one in back,
The way he acts,
Is he reminding you of anyone we know?
Isn't he so
Like certain people I could name?"

— They Might Be Giants, "Certain People"

Short for "Exported Character", an Expy is a character from one series who seems very similar to a character in another, older series (Or even the same). A few minor traits — such as age and name — may change, but there's no doubt that they are almost one and the same. Often seen in different works by the same writer(s) or production team.

This can simply be the tendency of writers to prefer certain characterizations for important characters (or knowing which ones are most marketable/popular), or the influence of the design process. Or on the other hand, it may just be a bad attempt to try to revive a character that the writer liked, but nobody else did and had to get rid of it. When by a different author, it may be a Homage to the original creator and/or character. In the negative sense, an expy can be seen as a just a bloated, gimmicky version of a perfectly serviceable past character. In a positive sense, it can refer to an "upgrade" of a two-dimensional or otherwise limited character to one more appreciably complex.

Theory: any Characters As Device trope, if taken to the extreme, can result in the character appearing to be a mere expy of the Ur Examples for that trope. Especially if the character is subject to Flanderization to the point of having few defining characteristics outside of the trope they represent. See Overused Copycat Character.

Most often seen in animation and video games, where it's much easier to make a newer character resemble an older one. Occasionally happens when characters from different stories end up sharing voice actors, making or even forcing their personalities to look even more similar, which often leads to jokes based on the voice actor's former role.

When the character appears in the same show as the previous character, he's often a Suspiciously Similar Substitute.

The key difference between this and Captain Ersatz is that an Expy is not clearly supposed to be the character, but is rather very similar, while Captain Ersatz is obviously the same character but with the Serial Numbers Filed Off. Please keep this distinction in mind before adding an example here. Also note that a fictional counterpart to a real-life person would not be an Expy. When a character strongly resembles a real person, rather than a fictional character, that's No Celebrities Were Harmed. A quick glance around TV Tropes will reveal just how often these mistakes are made on this very wiki.

Compare to Bleached Underpants, Alternate Company Equivalent, Name's The Same, Roman A Clef, Why Does Everyone Think I'm Deadpool?, Similar Squad, Same Story Different Names. Not to be confused with X P.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

The original 1975 Time Bokan by Tatsunoko Productions featured a Terrible Trio consisting of a Fat and Skinny duo headed by a Stripperiffic female. From then on, the preceding series of Yatterman, Zenderman, Otasukeman, Yattodetaman, Ippatsuman, Itadekiman and Kiramekiman would feature expies with same characteristics, and same seiyuus.
- In fact it is not just limited to the antagonists. The original Time Bokan had the two main protagonists be a Battle Couple, and five series afterwards would have their own respective expies (Yattodetaman and Ippatsuman just had a single hero be the main protagonist). Regularly these Battle Couples would have a Robot Buddy as well.
Johan Liebert of Monster is an expy for Michio Yuki of MW. Both are involved in a secret military experiment since they were kids. These experiments turned them Ax Crazy and Complete Monster characters. They use their charisma to manipulate powerful people, ambitions to cause The End Of The World As We Know It, provoke the good guys to kill them, and they're also cross-dressers.
Without even airing (or having actual previews), it's fairly obvious that Ain of (the recently announced anime) Despera is an expy of Lain of Serial Experiments Lain. Then again, it's possible that the entire show is an expy of Serial Experiments Lain.
The author of Hellsing admits that almost every damn character was 100% ripped off from his old works.
Appearing only in the animated adaptation of Toward The Terra, Serge Starjon is the expy of Serge Batouille, the main character of Kaze To Ki No Uta. Both are similar in appearance and personality.
Mahou Sensei Negima has a large cast who have traits of several other anime and video game characters. While it's common for more personality types to be recycled endlessly anyway, many of the most prominent characters are toned-down analogues to Love Hina characters: Asuna is a less violent Naru, Nodoka is an early Shinobu, Ku Fei is Su with brawns switched with brains, Chizuru Naba is a less foolish Mutsumi, etc. Setsuna's similarities to Motoko are explained by them being using the same fighting style.
- Most characters naturally have design and personality traits from Love Hina characters. Keep in mind just one or two elements does not make them an instant expy.
  - Chisame looks and acts like nerd Naru. She's also starting to resemble Kyon, as both started as Ordinary High School Student which was then dragged kicking and screaming into crazyness before finally returning normal, only to find normalcy to be uninteresting anymore and decided to return to the crazyness while still being snarky about it. Especially after The Final Temptation sub-arc reveals that the reason she isn't affected by the Lotus Eater Machine is because deep inside, she finds her current life fulfilling.
  - Motoko is split into Setsuna as fighting Motoko, Akira as kind motoko, Madoka as Tsundere Motoko.
  - Nodoka is a dead ringer for young-Kanako.
- A rather obscure one: Fate Averruncus is obviously based on Program Number 0 from Akamatsu's first manga, AI Love You.
- Before it was scrapped, Akamatsu was hired to draw a manga of Threads Of Fate. A number of its character designs can be seen transmigrated to Negima. Most obvious are Negi having elements of Rue, and Anya being a dead ringer for Princess Mint.
- Yue Ayase draws concepts from two characters. Her prototype design was given to Akamatsu by the artist for the Read Or Dream manga, based on Hisami◊, ahoge and all. The second, better known source is Patchouli Knowledge, a magician with long purple hair and unexcitable personality usually seen in a vast library. Yue's wand bears Patchouli's trademark crescent and she wears a similar hat during the school festival. Mix the two and...◊
  - From the same series, Evangeline shares more than a few parallels to Remilia Scarlet, the Final Boss of EoSD, in that they are both immortal loli vampires with similar personalities.
- Chachamaru is based on the two robot maids from To Heart. While she looks and acts more like Serio, as her hair color entails, she has some of Multi in her as well.
- Student 31 Zazie bears a strong resemblance to Pagliaccio of the 31 Primevals, made more obvious in her skimpy performance outfit◊. Their facial marks and skin tone are basically flipped, and both are emotionless clowns with robed cohorts. There have been joking fan theories that Zazie is the last boss... As of chapter 294, they might have been surprisingly close.
- Twin-tailed Dark Skinned Blond Tsundere Emily Sevensheep might be an expy of Triela.
AI Love You has numerous examples taken from Oh My Goddess: Saati is Belldandy, Toni is Urd, Kimika Aso is Sayoko Mishima. Forty fills the same spot as Skuld, but has a notably different personality and is more similar to Kaolla Su from Love Hina.
Related to the Negima examples above, Mina Tepes from Dance in the Vampire Bund is an obvious expy of Evangeline. They're both blonde vampire lolis with hot adult forms, both are very powerful, and both are often shown in skimpy clothing and in various states of undress.
Despite the fact that they share little in appearance, Shampoo in Ranma 1/2 was a deliberate attempt by Rumiko Takahashi to do a better job with the character of Lum from Urusei Yatsura.
- The anime would have originally had Shampoo look a lot more like Lum; in the season one opening, there are eye-catches of Shampoo showing her with dark green hair and light blue eyes.
- Word of God says that the Inu Yasha and Kagome romance is pretty much a mirror of Ranma and Akane's romance; I/K's is treated more "seriously" simply because it's an adventure show more than a comedy.
- But Inuyasha is a lot more Ranma then Kagome is Akane- note the perching, attitude, and even resemblance.
  - Inuyasha and male Ranma even share a voice actor (in Japanese and, in the later seasons, English as well).
- Akemi from Maison Ikkoku is suspiciously similar to Nabiki Tendo, in their eyes and their seductive, jovial natures. Also, she has minor traits of Ranma (face-making, selfish but nice, off-the hook). She could be practically be the offspring of Ranma and Nabiki...
  - Nabiki and Akemi share a few features, but neither one is a ripoff of the other. Deep down, waaaaay deep down, Akemi is still a nice person whereas Nabiki is The Ultimate Capitalist
- Yotsuya from Maison Ikkoku looks identical to Sekoi from Takahashi's early series Dust Spot (a.k.a. Wasted Minds). The fact that Sekoi is a secret agent and Yotsuya keeps his job a secret from the residents of Ikkoku has lead some fans to wonder if they're actually the same person.
The three main characters of Kannazuki no Miko were all upgrade expies from an earlier Kaishaku work called Cross Triangle. (Kurusugawa Himeko and Oogami Souma even shared partial names with their predecessors — Kurusu and Oogami.)
- All of them have returned yet again in supporting roles in Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora: virtually unchanged, except that Himeko now affects a pair of glasses.
  - Then there's Kaishaku's most recent manga, Zettai Shoujo Seiiki Amnesian. Guess who's back. Seriously, take a wild guess. You may find the scanlation here.
  - And if anyone's interested, there's also the web novel Himegami. You know who are the main characters, so here's the link. It's in Japanese, BTW, so you might want to wait for someone to translate it.
  - Of course, Himegami and Amnesian also have expies of other Kaishaku characters. They sure love reusing.
The anime Hunter X Hunter, based on a manga by Yoshihiro Togashi, featured a Ninja named Hanzo who was similar in design to Kazemaru (who was also a ninja) from Yu Yu Hakusho, which was also based on a manga by Togashi.
- Also, Chrollo Lucifer arguably being an Expy of Shinobu Sensui- right down to their coloring, their age (26), the similar Facial Markings, the manner in which they fight (offense making good defense, manipulation of their enemies), and the fact that they both got/may have gotten their genocidal ideas from watching a videotape.
Shii from Puni Puni Poemi is quite a lot like Hyatt from Excel Saga, only excluding the tendency to cough up blood, drop dead, and come back to life, and including glasses and outrageously huge Gag Boobs. They even have the same voice actress, in both the Japanese and English versions.
Characters in Yu-Gi-Oh with counterparts in the sequel, Yu-Gi-Oh GX:
- Right from the mouths of the powers that be, the protagonist, Judai, was designed with Jyonouchi's personality and Yugi's dueling skills.
- The Season 2 Big Bad, Saiou, is basically an Expy of Marik (with his sister Mizuchi an Expy of Isis), using the same strategy as Dartz.
- Kaiba has three in Kaiser Ryo, Manjoume and Edo Phoenix, all of which encompass different aspects of Kaiba's character.
- Sho seems to be based on little Yugi.
- The Sacred Beasts are Expys of the God Cards.
Expies in the third sequel Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds:
- Jack Atlas in 5D's is clearly Kaiba. The dub plays this aspect up.
- His assistant Mikage also seems to be an Expy of Scheris from Scryed in both appearance and her relationship with Jack.
- Bruno looks like an Expy of Johan from Yu-Gi-Oh GX, with his blue hair and instant Hoyay relationship with The Hero to the point of making other characters jealous. Johan himself was actually an Expy of Judai. So Bruno is an expy of Johan who is an expy of Judai who is an expy of Yugi/Jyonouchi.
- Sherry seems like a Gender Flipped version of Edo Phoenix from GX — a Bad Ass Well Intentioned Extremist out to avenge her parents' murder.
- In a nutshell, Kazuki Takahashi seems to love mixing different characters together to create new ones, usually combinations of the three original main characters.
  - Judai has Jonouchi's personality, Yugi's Dueling skills and Kaiba's (relative) hair color.
  - Yusei Fudo has Yami Yugi's facial structure and eye shape, Jonouchi's height range (middle height of the main trio) and obviously, Kaiba's blue eyes, humble (coming from Satellite) origins and 'no-nonsense' attitude.
  - And of course, Jack Atlas with the majority of Kaiba's personality, Jonouchi's hair color and Yami Yugi's violet eyes.
The Futari Wa Pretty Cure girls have counterparts in Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash* Star — Saki and Mai. This is strong enough that a preview for the Italian version of Splash* Star boasts of the former's "return," though ultimately this was dropped for the actual dub.
- Yes Pretty Cure 5 apparently tried to do it again before changing their tune to make a more traditional Magical Girl team; traces of Nagisa and Honoka can still be found in Rin and your choice of Nozomi or Karen, despite their being tweaked considerably. More obvious is Komachi, otherwise known as Retasu.
  - And on the sequel, Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo, traces of the silver Antauri could be found in Milky Rose during her Aloof Ally phase.
Possibly in an effort to make the typical cipher role interesting, the Kyoto Animation version of Yuuichi from Kanon is basically the well-liked Kyon (thus, "Kyuuichi") from Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu, complete with Shout Out.
- Isn't that backwards? Yuuichi is quite snarky in the original Visual Novel dating back to 1999. If anything, Kyon is an expy of Yuuichi.
Yukiho from The iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia looks exactly like Shiori from Kanon, and even has a snow reference in her name.
Sailor Moon's Usagi is an odd example of an Expy appearing with the original character, as the Codename wa Sailor V manga, in which Minako first appears, predates the series. This results in strange similarities with hair color, both having a magical talking cat, and both having a Magitek disguise device. They also have identical-looking families (both based on the author's), although this was never alluded to in the later series, which would have made Minako the only other character with a sibling.
- Its different plot aside, the Live Action Adaptation might be an example of retro-fitted Expies in the eyes of older fans. Minako's serious and semi-antagonistic attitude is extremely evocative of the Outer Senshi. An odder case is Luna, whose human form was changed to that of a child for Audience Appeal, given a humorously useless Sailor form, and shares Usagi's hairstyle; all traits associated with Chibi Usa.
- Oddly enough, Takeuchi stated, that she originally wanted to give Usagi SILVER hair, to make her less of an Expy. Her publisher, however, told her not to, since a mysterious, calm colour like that would have interfered with her You Suck personality.
- There was also the transition of Amano -> Umino (although the latter got significantly more character development and sympathy) and (to a lesser extent) Hikaru -> Naru.
Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop 's lead characters are designed by the same author and look it. Mugen evokes a Spike before his series began, but otherwise share the same afro, nihilism, and English voice actor.
- Cowboy Bebop being basically Lupin III In Space is naturally made of expies itself. Spike has Lupin's lanky build and agility, Jet is a mix of Jigen and Zenigata, Faye takes Fujiko's Asian seductress role. Vicious is the most blatant as Goemon without a Heel Face Turn.
Lampshaded in Digimon Adventure 02, where Taichi declared Daisuke to be the leader of the new group due to being the character most like him. Daisuke eventually turned out to be something like a parody of his first season counterpart, with all good and bad points humorously exaggerated. This is further parodied in that most of the time Daisuke ends up being completely ignored by his team, who are on paper far more suited for the role. (Since they all have a tendency to stand around paralyzed by angst and self-doubt, the totally unflappable Daisuke ends up saving the world anyway.)
- Plenty of other Digimon characters may or may not be Expies of each other, most notably the Google Boys.
- In Digimon Tamers, several adult characters appear to be modeled visually upon the children from the two previous seasons:
  - Takato's father resembles adult Daisuke in the Where Are They Now scene at the end of season 2 (both even have jobs connected to food, bread and ramen respectively)
  - Yamaki not only resembles but shares part of his name with Yamato from season 1
  - One member of the Monster Makers crew, an Indian woman, corresponds to Mina of season 2.
  - The teacher in Tamers looks like Hikari (who became a teacher) and even shares the same voice actress in the dub. (This led to fans being desperate to make them the same character, even though the two are very different in personality. The problem is made worse by the fact that the credits were very hard to read... the names "Nami" and "Kari" looked pretty much the same.)
- The Digimon Kaiser is an Expy to Neo Saiba of the manga. The "Digimon Queen" Ruki Makino,as her title hints, have many parallels with the Digimon Kaiser.
Most female leads in Hayao Miyazaki's films are Expies of Nausicaa. This is almost averted in Laputa: Castle in the Sky, until the main villain removes Sheeta's pigtails.
- Averted with Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle, who, while still plenty cute in her young form, is definitely "plain" by comparison.
- Chihiro and Rin from Spirited Away look a lot like Shizuku and her older sister from Whisper of the Heart.
  - Or more like an early-teen Mei.
- The males in most of Miyazaki's films look to be expies as well. Just look at Lupin and Ashitaka, and tell me they weren't drawn from the same cloth visually. Then, look at Haku from Spirited Away, they all look drastically alike.
- Miyazaki does this deliberately. He treats character designs as "actors", and re-uses them between films. They're rarely expies in anything but appearance, though.
Leiji Matsumoto is another writer who uses 'actors' to the extreme, which considering the number of crossover characters in his series, can be confusing as hell. It's particularly noticeable in Galaxy Express 999, when after watching enough episodes you can predict a character's personality, and even their chances of surviving the episode, the first time they appear. Strangely enough, this doesn't make the series any less awesome.
Everyone in the Giant Robo OVA is an Expy of a character from various manga by Mitsuteru Yokoyama.
Tite Kubo revived the protagonist of his ill-fated first manga, Zombie Powder, as the arrancar Grimmjow Jeagerjaques in his more successful later series — Bleach — even drawing him in the exact same pose on one of the covers. Interesting in that the new character is an antagonist, albeit one who seems well on his way to a Heel Face Turn.
- Zombie Powder earns the distinction of producing two expies in one series from the same character. An early design for Gamma is very clearly the design around for Renji Abarai.
- Make that three, Stark's released form is also based on Gamma, just with guns instead of a chainsword.
The relationship and design of Louise and Saito in Zero No Tsukaima is greatly similar to Shana and Yuuji in Shakugan No Shana. They even have the same voice actors. While she doesn't have a Yuuji/Saito counterpart, Taiga from Toradora is also in their mold.
- Much more. Kugimiya Rie voice-acted Shana of Shakugan No Shana (animated by J.C. Staff), Nagi of Hayate No Gotoku (Synergy SP, J.C. Staff for the second season), Louise of Zero No Tsukaima (J.C. Staff), Taiga of Toradora (J.C. Staff), and Yuuhi of Akane-Iro ni Somaru Saka (TNK). Each character after Shana is an Expy and textbook Tsundere, is the female lead of the show, and is designed similarly (especially in the shows animated by J.C. Staff). Shana's "Urusai! Urusai! Urusai!" (Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut Up!) Catch Phrase is often shouted out (literally and figuratively) by the various characters. From 2005-2008, at least one, and usually more, Tsundere characters voiced by Kugimiya have been airing simultaneously on Japanese TV. Despite the obvious Hey Its That Voice effect, Kugimiya has avoided becoming a Pigeon Holed Voice Actor and continues to play a broad range of characters.
- The headmaster has an appearance very similar to Dumbledore from Harry Potter.
Subverted massively in Tsubasa, where the major characters are warned that during their dimension-hopping, they will likely meet many different versions of the same person. This results in later volumes featuring Expys of characters from earlier in the same manga. Continuing with the "Alternate Universe" theme, nearly all of these recurring characters are themselves Expys from an earlier CLAMP work.
- And then inverted when one of the "same face, different place" characters really does turn out to be the same person they'd met before.
- Deconstructed later on, when one Expy turns out to be the son of the character he mimics, for... less than healthy reasons.
- CLAMP wrote Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle as a 20th anniversary Fanservice gift to its fans, so Expy is essentially the raison d'etre for the series. xxxHolic is a concurrent CLAMP manga series that intersects so tightly with Tsubasa as to require reading both to fully appreciate and understand each story. For the 100+ list of CLAMP Expys in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, see Tsubasa Chronicle Crossover Characters Note that the crossovers with xxxHolic are mostly deleted from the anime adaptations because separate production companies animated each series, creating contractual and creative differences. Expy instances in Tsubasa vary in the anime because the series veers from the manga late in season two (though is recovered mostly in the Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations OVA series.
Most Gundam series will have a character based on Char Aznable, known as a Char Clone (or just "A CHAR"). Wikipedia lists 16 Char Clones in the entire Gundam franchise to date. They're most easily identified by the fact that they wear a mask for little or no reason and occasionally have a penchant for piloting red mobile suits. They're almost always The Rival and/or The Dragon. Notable Char expys include Iron Mask from Gundam F91, Zechs from Gundam Wing , Rau Le Creuset in Gundam Seed, and Neo Roanoke from Gundam Seed Destiny, most recent but without hidden identity Mr Bushido aka Graham Akre & even a literal clone of Char in the Gaia Gear series of novels & audio dramas.
- The backstory of Gundam X is basically a thinly disguised version of the original Gundam series, only with a [1]. As a result, several characters and mobile suits are expies of characters and suits from the original series, even if their actual role is pretty different from their original one. Like Janmil, the Amuro expy, who is the mentor and ship captain, while Lancerow is a maskless Char expy without any kind of rivalry with the actual main character of the series, Garrod Ran.
- Char clones show up quite often in other Humongous Mecha series' as well (see Elzam Branstein's entry in the Games section). Lelouch from Code Geass is a borderline example. Apparently the idea of him wearing a mask came from executives who said something along the lines of "It just wouldn't be a Sunrise show without a mask".
  - While Lelouch certainly shares main traits with Char, he may also be partially based on Paptimus Scirocco. Char tends to play Xanatos Speed Chess, while both Scirocco and Lelouch are more traditional Chessmasters. They also both have pink/red-haired female henchmen who are in love with them and who they leave most of the front-line combat to even though they're skilled mecha pilots themselves (Sarah and Kallen).
- Mecha Expies are also par for the course in Gundam. Wing's Shenlong Gundam is an Expy of G's Dragon Gundam, X's Leopard is an Expy of Wing's Heavyarms, Deathscythe and Deathscythe H resemble Master Asia's Kowloon and Master Gundams respectively, grunt units are almost always based on either the Zaku or the GM & if the series features mobile suits that can transform it's guaranteed that at least one will have pretty much the exact same transformation scheme as the Zeta Gundam.
- Murrue Ramius and the Archangel from Gundam Seed are expies of Bright Noah and the White Base, full stop.
- Royalty? Check. Pacifist? Check. The Hero's Love Interest? Check. Takes care of the war orphans? Check. Singer? Check. Yes, Marina Ismail from Gundam 00 was probably intended as an Expy of Lacus Clyne of SEED, except that she has nothing comparable to Lacus' iron will. And let's not forget that Lacus herself was partly an expy of Relena Peacecraft/Darlian, also a royal pacifist Love Interest for The Hero.
  - Lacus is also share a bit with Dianna Soriel from Turn A Gundam, both are very famous figurehead of their people who wishes to live a quiet life somewhere, had an imposter/double and a sexless romance with the main character.
  - Speaking of Relena, she is based on Sayla Mass: an exiled princess who adopted a different alias, an older brother who became a soldier to avenge his parents' deaths, and has a close relationship with the male lead character.
  - Cagalli Yula Athha features elements of both Sayla and Relena.
- Fllay from Gundam Seed has several clones in every Gundam after SEED. Meyrin (and to some extent Lunamaria) Hawke and Nena Trinity all bear a resemblance to Fllay.
- Kira Yamato from Gundam Seed is said to be a mix of Amuro and Loran, having Amuro's mechanical aptitude and having almost every bit of Loran's events happened to him. Having a powerful mobile suit? Check, having a distate for violence? Check. Relationship with Earthling daughter's who had her father killed by his people? Check. Sexless romance with princess figure? Check.
- Heero Yuy from Gundam Wing has the honor of not only having an expy in another Gundam series (Setsuna from Gundam 00), but has one outside the Gundam franchise (Sosuke from Full Metal Panic). The scary thing is, Sosuke is even more anti-social and military minded than Heero. At least Heero could blend in a high school; Sosuke can barely not shoot or blow anything up that seems suspicious.
  - Setsuna F. Seiei from Gundam 00 is pretty much a dead ringer for Sosuke. Pilot of a physicsdefying Super Prototype Mecha? Check. Child Soldier in a wartorn islamic country? Check. Ax Crazy rivals with unhealthy obsessions? you got it. Need I go on? Makes you think their creators were trying to one-up each other.
- Both Gundam Wing's Heero Yuy (the original one) and King Peacecraft, as well as Gundam SEED's George Glenn, were based on Zeon Zum Deikun.
Continuing on from the Gundam listing above, Code Geass has plenty of its own.
- Lelouch is a main character version of Char, what with both being exiled members of (more or less) royalty, suffering from having their beloved parent murdered, having a sister, planning for revenge, and not allowing that sister to be part of it, or even knowing about it. And when she does find out, they have a showdown, and she gets in his way, etc, etc. They also fight an internal battle between revenge, wanting to join with the "nice guys" and be a real hero, and mass genocide.
- Kallen is so much and so little an expy of Domon Kasshu that many like to joke about them being father and daughter. Which is a little ironic, since Kallen hates her Britannian father, and Domon is Japanese. Well, Neo Japanese. She's got a similar facial structure, a one hit kill hand attack, and massive amounts of hot blood. However, she just barely misses out on being the shows most important female, is more prone to killing her enemies, and some rather twisted circumstances towards the end of the show make her try to kill her love rather than do the "Love Love Tenkyoken" with them.
- Suzaku's Lancelot is a Gundam expy. It's the first truely humanoid design in its world of origin, with unprecedented mobility, in a white colour scheme. It even has Beam Shields! Suzaku, on the other hand, is not really a Gundam main character expy, as the series shows us quite clearly that Suzaku is part of an organisation which does not agree with, and will not allow, his ~~equalist~~ egalitarian views to come to fruition.
  - Suzaku does fairly regularly get compared to Kira Yamato (enough to get a Fan Nickname out of it, anyway). He's a brunet with a super mecha, opposed to violence, has a best friend for a Rival, a romance with a pink-haired pacifist princess...
  - Except that the Lancelot is white and gold with green eyes witch is more like vandreed
- Rolo's Vincent has a V on its head like a gundam to top it off Rolo is a Geass User like lelouch but Rolo only stops the persons sense of time wile Lelouch comands people and Rolo killed Shirley a girl that Lelouch cared about and Lelouch hates Rolo for that just like how Amuro killed Lalah a girl that Char cared about and Char hates amuro for that plus Char and Amuro are Newtypes wich makes Rolo the Amuro to Lelouch
- Lelouch is likely based on a pastiche of Char and his clones, since he has a lot in common with both Char and Zechs/Milliardo. However, don't you dare tell me that you see no resemblance (both physical and in regards to plans) between Muruta Azrael and Schneizel el Britannia. Only difference is that Schneizel can actually keep his cool and dignity near the end.
Considering they were both made by Studio Gainax, it is not surprising that Dr. Jennifer Portman in This Ugly Yet Beautiful World is an Expy of Dr. Ritsuko Akagi in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- Who, in turn, was an expy of Electra from Nadia The Secret Of Blue Water, and in turn Shinji's character designer admitted to basing his appearance on Nadia. Gave her a haircut, basically◊.
- Hikari and Akari are considered to be Expies of Mahoro and Minawa of Mahoromatic, so much so that they share the same seiyuu. In that same vein, Jennifer could probably be considered an Expy of Shikijo-sensei, considering her Gag Boobs and Bottle Fairy tendencies; however, Jennifer thankfully doesn't have the same pedotastic crush on the male lead that Shikijou-sensei does. But once again, same voice actress.
  - Really, just about everyone in This Ugly Yet Beautiful World has an analogue in Mahoromatic, right down to sharing Japanese voice actors. Including Those Two Guys and Those Three Girls. Also, Slash -> Ioneous, Suguru -> Ryou.
Clannad is, in some ways, a revisiting of Kanon, only somewhat more depressing and switching around the character dynamics. For example, Sunohara is Kitagawa as the main character's best friend, Tomoyo and Kotomi are the two different aspects of Mai, Fuko i.s Ayu, only sadder and not the winning girl, and Nagisa is Shiori, except that she really dies and that she's the winning girl.
- It could be argued that Nagisa is Shiori because she doesn't really die, if you're going by Kyo Ani's (and the visual novel's) continuity.
- Also, Kyou and Ryou bear a striking resemblance to Kagami and Tsukasa of Lucky Star, respectively. Mauve-haired twin sisters—one a Tsundere with long hair, the other shy and gentle with short, though the Fujibayashi twins are identical while the Hiiragi twins are fraternal. Amusingly enough, Tsukasa even remarks at one point that "Kagami" can also be read as "Kyou"...
  - Amazing in that Kyoto Animation finished Lucky Star before working on Clannad.
  - Most likely a reference to the visual novel, which was contemporaneous with the original Yonkoma on which the Lucky Star anime was based. It may also just have been a coincidence that the studio capitalised on to up the otaku quotient; Kagami is actually named after her creator.
  - This◊ picture (which is also the header picture for the Cosplay Fan Art page) says it all.
- Misae is an Expy of Kaname Chidori, down to the seiyuu. Hell, her last name is Sagara.
- Tsukasa is a visual (at least) expy of Akari Kamigishi from To Heart, which the series delights in pointing out. The poor girl once gets photographed by an Otaku who sees the resemblance and Konata once gives her Akari's red uniform.
  - By transivity, Ryou is also a visual Expy of Akari.
Mitsuka-sensei from DearS is a direct Expy of Shikijo-sensei, almost to the point of ripoff status, as they share the same English voice actress and creepy Little Kid Lover fetish. Ren is an obvious expy of most of the persocoms from Chobits, but more specifically, Chii.
- Speaking of Dear S, Junpei from Nyan Koi is very reminiscent of Takeya.
Most Mai-Otome characters are Expies of Mai-HiME characters. In fact, almost all of the main characters of Mai-HiME appear in Mai-Otome, although they may only be supporting characters or even extras. The reverse is often true as well — the main character of Mai-Otome, Arika, appeared in Mai-HiME for only a few seconds at the end of the last episode. One character, the android Miyu, actually seems to be the exact same Miyu and not a new character after all, as though Mai-Otome is set in Mai-HiME's future. The future-time setting leads to some fan speculation about the Mai-Otome characters being reincarnations.
In One Piece there were two characters who share similarites to Nami who appeared in previous versions of Romance Dawn. One was a Swordswoman who joined Luffy's crew, personality wise she was more gentle than Nami. Another was more similar to Nami's current self in terms of personality however from the way the Pilot's story was going it seemed like she wouldn't join the crew.
- Weirder case here because we have no reason to think Oda was ever influenced by Berserk, but the resemblance between Zoro and Guts is rather uncanny. It's as if Zoro is how Guts probably would've been if he was a allowed to have an easier life and much, much more faithful friends.
- Some fans note that Jinbei may be an Expy of Aqua Man. Aside from his water-based moveset, he has the ability to telepathically communicate with aquatic life, which is explicitly noted to be an extreme rarity for Fishmen. He even lampshades the What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway that is often associated with Aquaman when he states that he is of no use in land battles(of course, that's pretty relative; the very next thing he does is punch the air to create a shockwave that knocks out everything near him).
Shotaro Ishinomori introduced a character by the name of Roam in the Legend Of Zelda manga he drew. This character is an obvious expy for Ishinomori's Cyborg 009 character 002/Jet Link.
- Jet got yet another Expy in GaoGaiGar's Pizza/Soldato J.
- And another in Disgaea's Kurtis.
Mahoro from Mahoromatic and Noel from Shina Dark are both robot girl maids who hate ecchi things with a passion voiced by Ayako Kawasumi. Mahoromatic and Shina Dark are by the same author, so the expyness makes sense.
- Also in Shina Dark. Noel's other form resembles the Numbers' from Nanoha Striker S. And Gallet resembles and has a similar personality to Signum from Nanoha. And to solidify it all, Shina Dark's artist is authoring a Nanoha spin-off.
- No, that's the definition of an Expy, it doesn't just 'make sense'.
- Chapter 19 plays with the Noel / Mahoro connection to it's logical extreme.
Several characters & mecha from Mamoru Nagano's Five Star Stories are expies of ones from an anime he had earlier worked on with Yoshiyuki Tomino called Heavy Metal L-Gaim, not the least of which were the Humongous Mecha Junchoon & its pilot Colus VI who are expies of L-Gaim's titular mecha and series protagonist Daba Myroad. Infact, the story arc in the manga focusing on Colus VI retaking his throne is an almost exact retelling of the plot of L-Gaim. Interestingly, L-Gaim features an expy of its own Lilith Fau, a tinkerbell-esque fairy who bears an uncanny resemblance to Cham Huau from a previous Tomino series, Aura Battler Dunbine.
- They even become best friends in Super Robot Wars 4 and Super Robot Wars Compact
Akira from the Hentai game Viper V16: Rise is a blatant Expy of Yuka from Variable Geo. The two both work at maid cafes, and both share the same character designer (Takehiko "KimuTaka" Kimura). A later Viper game in the same setting introduced Makoto, an Expy of Variable Geo's Jun.
Nobuhiro Watsuki freely admits in the chapter notes to Busou Renkin that the series protagonist, Kazuki Muto, is a gender-swapped expy of Misao Makimachi from Rurouni Kenshin. In addition, he notes (to his apparent surprise) that one of the minor villains is a thinly recast Enishi, and theorizes that he wanted to give Enishi a happier ending through his expy.
- Speaking of Rurouni Kenshin, Nobuhiro Watsuki also Expies several Shinsengumi members by using them as bases for other non-Shinsensgumi characters. In particular, he used Hijikata as a reference for Aoshi, Okita for Soujirou (who also got Okita's birth name), Harada for Sanosuke, and Kanryuusai for Kanryuu.
- In fact, all three of Watsuki's post-Rurouni Kenshin manga series contain a Misao: Colice in Gun Blaze West, Kazuki in Busou Renkin and finally Elm in Embalming. Elm is even paired up with an Aoshi expy, Ashuhit.
- Do not forget the many characters in RK that share way too many features with Marvel characters to be considered merely shout outs. Seeing The Hulk, Gambit, Apocalypse, or Venom fighting Kenshin in Meiji era Japan is... surreal, to say the least.
Pokémon's most infamous expy is Ritchie, who also has a few of the same Pokémon as Ash (but he has a bit more common sense). Ash's Sinnoh rival Paul is an expy of GSC antagonist Silver in personality and appearance, though ironically is even crueller than his original, releasing untold numbers of Pokémon that he captures because he finds them too weak (it's yet to be seen if he'll ever grow out of it like Silver did).
- Is it me or does Mewtwo look like Freeza from Dragon Ball ?
  - He's actually Giegue/Giygas from Earthbound/Mother. The design team that worked on Earthbound/Mother also worked on Pokemon, so they used many of the same designs.
Suigintou from Rozen Maiden has a couple now:
- Kyouran Kazoku Nikki gives us Himemiya Senka who when first introduced shared Suigintou's white hair (intended to resemble silver), unnatural eye color, and creases under the eyes showing her disturbed mentality, and even remarkably reminiscent dress as well as obsessive jealousy and hatred towards a main character. She's even referred to as a "Solitary Doll," though in this case it refers to her replacement role as her family's shared abuse victim. Like Gin, though, you eventually learn to empathize with her a bit once you know her background.
- The Daughter of Twenty Faces gives us a character known only as "the white-haired demon" so far. She shares Suigintou's long white hair, purple eyes, and psychotic creases under the eyes as well as a jealous, obsessive cruelty towards the main character. While she looks human most of the time, her body is actually some kind of animated marionette, complete with Rozen Maiden-like doll joints.
- Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni: In the second season. A very briefly seen character had pale hair with devious eyes. And she was even voiced by Rie Tanaka who also voiced Suigintou.
The three major characters of Detective Conan are visual Expys of the major characters of Aoyama's previous manga Magic Kaitou. Most especially, Kudo Shinichi is a visual Expy of Kuroba Kaito. This is lampshaded by the fact that not only do they have the same seiyuu in the anime, Kaito is mistaken for Shinichi once in the early manga?and is able to impersonate Shinichi without his usual Latex Perfection masks in one of the Non Serial Movies, Magician of the Silver Sky. The resemblances between Aoko and Ran, and Nakamori and Kogoro, are downplayed as the Magic Kaitou cast is reintroduced into the later, and better-drawn, Detective Conan.
- Also, Conan himself is an Expy of Sherlock Holmes, much as Kaitou is an Expy of Arsène Lupin.
Masataka Takayanagi from TenjhoTenghe and Kazu from Air Gear. Both are Oh! Great creations, and both are shy and reserved with untapped potential. Also, they both play second fiddle to hot headed leads Soichiro Nagi and Ikki, respectively.
Dufaux, the bookreader of Zeon, is an Expy of an unused design of Kiyomaro Takamine in Gash Bell. Similarly, Ted bears a strong resemblance to one of the original designs of Gash.
Sora Hasegawa from Ah My Goddess strongly resembles Yoriko Nikaido from the same mangaka's earlier series Youre Under Arrest.
Reading into some of Mrs. Arakawa's other works shows a few oddly familiar faces. She openly admitted that Jean Havoc and Lust were based on Jack and Kuo from Shanghai Youma Kikai. Then there's Dr. Tachibana, who looks like Ranfan with glasses.
Nanaka from Myself Yourself resembles and initially acts like Komachi Tsugumi from Ever17.
Most of class 2-D is taken from Zeon. The resident CHAR is Harry MacKenzie.
In Amanchu!, the author transported ARIA's Akari back to earth, renamed her Hikari and gave her some scuba gear. And seemingly infused her with some interesting drugs, since Hikari tends to be even more spaced-out than her predecessor—which is quite a feat in itself.
Kentaro Yabuki reused both the appearance and the powers of both Kyoko and Eve from Black Cat when designing Magical Flame Kyoko and Golden Darkness in To Love Ru.
- Train Heartnet, THE Black Cat, also gets an Expy in the form of a gun wielding killer called Black. he even has a gun that looks very much like Train's gun, Hades. he also seems to be based on Eraser!Train rather than Sweeper!Train.
Mutsumi Saburo/Mutsumi Hojo from Keroro Gunsou is kind of a sendup to Kaworu Nagisa from Neon Genesis Evangelion, to the point of having (decorative) wings on his back for his first appearance in the manga, and his "introduction" scene in the anime mirroring Kaworu's reveal as an angel, complete with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony playing in the background.
Signum from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha is an obvious Expy of Lamia Loveless: they look quite similar if looked through a good light, some of Signum's attacks are similar to those of Lamia's Angelg (Main offender is Signum's bow attack, which is a Shout Out to Phantom Phoenix. Her clothing in the final episode of Striker S looks a bit like Lamia's, and they are voiced by the same Seiyuu in a very similar way.
- From the most recent spoiler of the Darker And Edgier manga, apparently Signum was impaled (to death?) by a new enemy with her own Levantine. Which means it adds up yet another parallel with Lamia: Being beaten, defeated and presumably killed by a newcomer character, which would make the new enemy a female counterpart of Wilhelm von Juergen (though probably with more Badass dosage)
- See also Agito from Striker S, who is such an obvious expy that Western fans have taken to calling her "Etnagito". Don't forget the Amuro and Char vibes Nanoha and Fate give off, either: Nanoha's costume is even intended to evoke Amuro's signature RX-78-2 Gundam.
- Subaru has short hair, wears a bandana, is a big fan of Nanoha, and goes out of her way to copy her techniques. That gives her a striking similarity to Kasugano Sakura. Though the techniques is only in the name and instead looks like the features of Gao Gai Gar, leading to her Fan Nickname 'Gao Gai Gar-tan'
- Vita may as well be of Guy in loli form. Not only do they both sport a huge mech drill hammer, but the scene where Vita went up against the Cradle's engine and Eisen shattered (complete with dramatic fall) resembled Goldy shattering and Gaogaigar falling in FINAL. Vita's name is also involved with Hell and Heaven. (gemu giru gan go gufo, vita.) You also have this◊.
- Anti Villain Zest Grangaitz is pretty much a giant Expy of Zengar Zonvolt. Not only do they look similar and share a deep sense of honor, their big-brother relationships to young orphan girls also plays out in many ways similar.
Tamaki Suou and Kyouya Ootori from Ouran Highschool Host Club appear very similar to Satsuki and Toyua respectively from Hatori's older work, Millennium Snow.
Gaku Namikiri of Absolute Boyfriend is basically Tasuki from Yuu Watase's earlier work Fushigi Yuugi, reincarnated as a supernatual low-ranking salesman. Though Gaku is slightly less Hot Blooded, he's got the same Idiot from Osaka tendencies, the same loveably roguish demeanor, the same gift for socially incorrect remarks, and the same ability to show up whenever the plot conveniently needs to be moved along.
- Before we note that Tooya and Soushi are reincarnations of Tamahome (Tooya in looks and fighting skills; Soushi in looks), it must be said Tamahome is actually himself a reincarnation of Manato Sudou from Fushigi Yuugi's older sister, Shishunki Miman Okotowari.
Because of their many similaries (Stoic Child Soldiers who grow more human after meeting and protecting an Ojou, have Crouching Moron Hidden Badass goofball Lancers, and pilot Humongous Mecha with dangerous but powerful technology), Sousuke Sagara is often considered an Expy of Heero Yuy. When the two finally met in Super Robot Wars, their similarities were lampshaded, and Heero actually mentors Sousuke in an attempt to do something about his Fish Out Of Water-ness.
- In addition to this, Sousuke shares some chracter stylings from both Sanousuke and Kenshin from Ruouni Kenshin.
Claire, the protagonist of Claymore is an almost perfect expy of Ikuno from Angel Densetsu. Down to her behaviour. (And she's attracted to Raki/Yuji too). For some added expiness read the episode in which Kitano dreams during math lesson just after reading Claymore, and notice his sword and the oni's eyes.
Gerard in Fairy Tail. Not only does he look exactly like another mage, Sieg Hart from Mashima Hiro's previous manga Rave Master, he goes under the alias Siegrain for a long time and has some spells with the same name.
- And of course Kageyama, who is the mirror image of Shippuuden-version Shikamaru. Down to the shadow-based magic.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni: Chie-sensei is an authorized Expy of Ciel-senpai, down to the curry, seiyuu and Black Keys (well, wooden T-squares, in her case).
- Arguably, Frederica Bernkastel is an Expy of Rika Furude. It doesn't help that it's hinted that they're essentially the same people, but Bernkastel is said/guessed to be the totality of all of Rika's past lives. Epileptic Trees, anyone?
  - More than arguably, since the reference is made canonically in one of Rika's monologues. However, it's made in such a throwaway line, and there's so little support in any comparison of the characters throughout their series', so perhaps it's just an intercontinuity Shout Out.
The teacher/aide in Ken Akamatsu's Earth Defender Mao-chan looks identical to Naru from Love Hina, including the use of the same seiyuu, Horie Yui. The similarity is remarked on in the animated adaptation when the gang goes to a remarkably familiar looking hot spring inn and meet the un-named but equally familiar hostess.
With her long blonde pigtails, status as a former Dark Magical Girl who got the Defeat Means Friendship treatment and pulled a Heel Face Turn to become friends with the main character, and being voiced by Nana Mizuki, Hoshina Utau greatly resembles Fate Tesstarossa.
Almost every character in K-ON! is an Expy from Lucky Star.
- Which is why I support the yuri Crack Pairing of Miyuki/Tsumugi.
Likewise, most characters in Pani Poni Dash correspond to characters in Azumanga Daioh. Most obviously, the Cat God is basically Chiyo-Chibi (with a pinch of Mr. Kimura).
By Word Of God Ritsu's mother in Fruits Basket is very much based on a ghost character from one of Natsuki Takaya's earlier works.
In Seto No Hanayome, Lunar's dad is The Terminator WITH BLOND HAIR. Lunar herself bears quite a resemblance to Etna.
- "Quite a resemblence""? Lunar not only looks virtually identical to Enta (Lunar's hair being a few shades lighter, and her tail is different), her real personality is also very close to Etna's.
Max Taylor of the anime series Dinosaur King is very much an Expy of Ash Ketchum The similarities include thier weird hair, both being comical protagonists, yet serious about thier fighting, having a pet with lighting attacks and both having the same (English) voice. The connection is helped in that Veronica Taylor uses the exact same voice she used for Ash.
- In comparison, the show's villians, the Alpha Gang, are very much Expies of Team Rocket. Xander is James, especially the voice, Ursula in like Jesse, including her obsession with her beauty (and being voiced by Rachel Lillis with her 'Jesse' voice), and Ed is, I guess Wobbuffet.
Lucifer of Saint Beast is Sephiroth with black hair—they are otherwise identical in looks. However, he zig-zags all over the place in regards to similar personality, so that whenever Lucifer gets screen time (especially with Zeus) it just feels rather...odd.
Kaede from Ladies Versus Butlers seems a bit familiar...
Okay, here we go. Most people (in the audience, not in the show) seem to like the Broken Bird/Woobie/often Stoic character. One of the first and most well known is Ayanami Rei, from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Then, about eight years later, another hugely successful manga/anime debuts. That anime is Suzumiya Haruhi. The character is Nagato Yuki. About a year after that, Zero No Tsukaima debuts. Besides the two main characters having the same seiyuus as the two main characters of Shakugan No Shana, Zero no Tsukaima has Tabitha. All three have the same hair color (light bluish. Yuki's hair is kinda purplish too), are similarly very quiet, and have similarly tragic pasts (okay, Yuki's past isn't nearly as tragic as Rei's, but that may be because the Suzumiya Haruhi series is a comedy/sci-fi series, and NGE is a psychological drama/horror.)
Yukiteru from Mirai Nikki shares a number of character traits with Shinji, especially in the beginning. Timid and lonely but unable to connect with the people around them even if they really want to and are forced to fight even though they really don't want to. Both seem to want their father back in their lives, but both end up betrayed. The main difference seems to be Yukiteru has his mother and Yuno. The last of which is a mixed blessing to say the least.
- And let's not forget about that Kaworu thing that Akise's got going on... they even both ended up getting beheaded.
In one episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann there was a Team Gurren member who had the same clothes and hair as Battle Frontier Brain Noland from Pokemon.
Ai Kora is full of this tropes, featuring characters inspired by Love Hina and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Sakurako = Naru with Asuka Soryu Langley's looks thrown in. Tsubame = Kitsune mixed with Misato Katsuragi. Kirino = Motoko. Yukari = Shinobu. Hachibei, Tsubame, Yukari and kirino's designs respectively resemble Seiji, Rin, Midori and Nao from Midori No Hibi.
Ai Yazawa's series tend to borrow designs from whatever series she made that preceded them. For example, Tsutomu is a more fleshed-out Ken Nakagawa (though this is lampshaded in-series), and Yuusuke (from the same manga) is a possible precursor to NANA's Takumi. The fact that they both ended up sharing the same voice actor only adds to the idea. A more obvious example comes appearance-wise from Mikako to Miwako. (Justified, though, since they're sisters.)
The characters in Robotech are all expys of the characters in Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada. All three shows were originally unrelated but combined together to tell a multigenerational epic.
In Gun X Sword, Van is an expy of Spike of Cowboy Bebop in terms of very similar appearance, and Carmen 99 is an obvious expy of Faye from the same series.
In Desert Punk, Junko is something of a Faye/Fujiko expy.
The Count in Gankutsuou is an expy of Alucard of Hellsing. Both have the same Japanese voice actor, and the Count exhibits a number of traditional vampire traits (in fact, he might be more of a traditional vampire than Alucard). Also, both manifest Extra Eyes when they're about to do something badass/terrifying. Admitedly, the vampire idea in Gankutsuou derives in part from the Count of the novel being compared to one, specifically the Byron-expy Lord Ruthven- the anime just took the idea literally.
The main characters in Princess Tutu seem to be expies of the main characters in Junichi Sato's earlier work, Pretear. Both series have:
- A a redheaded Magical Girl with a lot of energy that struggle with feeling like they don't fit in due to changes in their lives, both played by Luci Christian in the dub. (Himeno in Pretear, Ahiru/Duck in Princess Tutu)
- A Tall Dark And Snarky Jerk With A Heart Of Gold that lashes out at the heroine because of trauma in their dark pasts but ends up falling for her. (Hayate, Fakir)
- A White Haired Pretty Boy with a gentle, giving heart who originally seems to be a love interest for the heroine, but ends up being tainted by evil because of the Dark Magical Girl and ending up as her romantic interest. (Sasame, Mytho)
- A dark-haired girl who is a friend of the heroine, but becomes the Dark Magical Girl because of a misguided belief that she's unloved. (Fenrir/Takako, Rue/Kraehe)
  - However, Princess Tutu was actually in the works while Sato and Ikuko Itoh (the creator of Tutu) was working on Sailor Moon, possibly meaning that the Pretear cast are the true expies. (Also, it's worth noting that Sasame and Fakir have the same actors in both the Japanese and English dubs—Takahiro Sakurai and Chris Patton, respectively—but this is likely just a casting fluke.)
Fushigi Boshi No Futago Hime: The vice principal and his two henchmen from season 2 are the spitting images of the Moon Kingdom's former and late chancellor and his two henchmen from season 1.
Angel Beats: This show also has some characters that fit this trope, especially the main protagonist Yui that looks alot to Haruhi Suzumiya. We also have the main protagonist Otonashi that is like almost all the other other protagonists of Key.Tenshi despite not looking the same as Nagato Yuki has the same personality has her.
Stop me if you've heard this premise before: A young, newly-hired male teacher and his female co-worker/love interest have to deal with a class of hyperactive students, particularly a "unique" trio of girls whose antics cause no shortage of misunderstandings. This can describe Kodomo No Jikan, Hanamaru Kindergarten, and Mitsudomoe. It's a triple threat of expy-ness!

Comic Books

When created for the Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends cartoon, Firestar's civilian identity bore a resemblance to Mary Jane Watson. The resemblance was actually remarked upon in the comics some time later. Likewise, her superhero powers make her a clear Expy of The Human Torch, the only difference being the gender swap to give Spidey an Amazing Female Friend.
- Additionally, the cartoon portrayed Firestar as a former member of the X-Men, and she replaced Jean Grey for The Smurfette Principle in that continuity. Triple Expy Action!
Marvel Comics' Donyell Taylor, originally codenamed Bandit, is an Expy of Marvel's own Gambit, a fact exploited shamelessly by an issue of Gambit's eponymous series when Bandit turns out to be romantically involved with Gambit's ex-wife Belladonna.
- Bandit was introduced in The New Warriors... which had the character Chord, who has a similar role and persona to Cable (though a completely different origin) and actually predates Cable's first appearance by almost a year. Then there's Wyre, from late Alpha Flight, who actually has wire-related powers (metallic Prehensile Hair... on his chest).
In the series The Invisibles, one of the main characters, Ragged Robin, is similar to another character created by the same writer during his run on Doom Patrol, Crazy Jane (According to Morrison himself, they're the same person in a different universe). More of this on The Other Wiki
Lee, the main character of Peter David's Fallen Angel is an Expy of Linda Danvers, protagonist of David's previous run on Supergirl. In fact, David did his best to fuel speculation that the characters were one and the same until the book's second volume, in which he chronicled Lee's origins. Later on, he introduced Lin, yet another expy of Linda Danvers, who can in fact be considered Linda in everything but name. Likewise, the God figure in the series is a small girl dressed in a tennis motif and carrying a tennis racket, which makes her an expy of Wally, the god figure in David's Supergirl who was a young boy who carried a baseball bat.
Conan The Barbarian: Janissa the Widowmaker for Red Sonja in the most recent Dark Horse Comics series.
John Byrne's college newspaper strip Gay Guy! had a villain called Charisma, whom no man could resist except... well, guess. Byrne liked the character concept so much that Karisma showed up on the Fantastic Four's doorstep a decade and a half later.
In recent X-Men comics, Hellion has become an Expy of Quentin "Kid Omega" Quire; Both have very powerful psychic abilities and inflammatory personalities to begin with, but Hellion's adopted Quentin's signature striped sweater-vest and started hanging out with Glob Herman, one of Quentin's old flunkies (and the only living member of the Omega Gang to still have his mutant powers). He's also spouting mutant supremacist rhetoric and telling baseling humans to "get back to your caves, apemen!"
- There's also Onyxx and Rockslide, two X-Men who have roughly the same powers (being giant rock men) and only a few strong physical differences (different colors, Onyxx has a helmet and is slightly bulkier, slightly different costumes). It's to the point that, seeing them on the same page, you could think one was an artist/colorist error meant to represent the other. This is lampshaded a few times when they're shown to be casual acquaintences who think highly of one another.
  - Both happen to also look like a Palette Swap of The Thing, who almost certainly inspired their creation. The only difference power-wise is that Rockslide can fire off body parts; Onyxx and the Thing can't.
Planetary by Warren Ellis contains a large number of Captains Ersatz, but the minor character of Jack Carter undergoes a remarkable transformation during the story in which he appears. He is initially introduced as a Captain Ersatz for John Constantine (who Ellis had written but did not create), but in the final panels of the story mutates into a true Expy of Spider Jerusalem from Ellis's Transmetropolitan.
- Who himself is an expy of Hunter S Thompson.
In the sixties, DCComics published a blatantly obvious Archie expy called Binky. The main difference was that Binky had dark hair, not red, and he dated a hotter version of Betty while a Veronica clone tried to get his attention. Even though it was very dated and inferior to the original, Binky reprint comic books were published in Scandinavia for decades.
Jeremy from the Angel/Spike comics is an Expy of Jim from The Office.
Jet Dream and her Stunt-Girl Counterspies are Expies of Pussy Galore and her Flying Circus and/or Gender Flipped Blackhawk Expies.
When Alan Moore began work on Watchmen, the plan was to use all of the characters DC purchased from Charlton Comics, but editors ultimately put the kibosh on that, so he had to create new ones. In a great sense of cyclical cosmic irony, The Question was a little known C-Stringer who inspired Moore's Rorschach, who then in turn inspired JLU's version of The Question, which worked so well it turned him into a major player again.
One story in The Maze Agency featured a detectived named Senor Lobo, whom writer Mike Barr has acknowledged was a deliberate homage to Hercule Poirot.
In his last series of The Punisher, Garth Ennis nails the looks and personality of the Colonel who captures him after none other than Morgan Freeman.
Not sure whether this belongs here or in Captain Ersatz, but I can't believe either page hasn't yet mentioned how similar Kirk "Man-Bat" Langstrom is to Curt "The Lizard" Connors. Really, regardless of where each character ended up, the only difference between their origins is the specific ailment they were trying to cure and the specific animal they were working on. The issue is that they were created within three years of each other (Man-Bat actually came first), so it's unclear how much of this was intentional or whether it was more like some of the ambiguous Dueling Movies cases.

Film

The character of Han, played by Sung Kang, in the Fast and Furious films is the same Han (also played by Kang) in the indie film Better Luck Tomorrow.e
Norman Bates of Psycho and David Callaway in Hide And Seek have similar characteristics. They are protagonists of their films, they fight antagonists not shown to us, they found out that they themselves are the antagonists, and they have a Split Personality Takeover afterwards.
Anybody else notice that Will Ferrell basically plays the same guy in most of his movies?
- Ditto for Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, David Spade, and pretty much every other Saturday Night Live cast member from the past fifteen years. Heck, Rob Schneider literally does nothing anymore other than yell "You can do eet" in Sandler's movies.
  - Just so we don't exclude the women, Tina Fey, whose character in Baby Mama is basically Liz Lemon with a different name and job.
Practically every character Hilary Duff plays (pre-War Inc. anyway) falls into the same kind of character.
Despite the use of many other characters from the comics, the Batman movies also have Expys for some characters. For instance, since, for some reason, Tim Burton didn't want to use Harvey Bullock (possibly because Bullock's character wasn't truly corrupt) in the 1989 Batman movie, he created the overweight, gruff, corrupt Lt. Eckhardt in the Batman movie. In the Dark Knight Trilogy, you have Officers Stevens and Ramirez, who are essentially Expys for Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya, with the exception of, again, being that Ramirez is corrupt. Stevens on the other hand is Bullock right down to the toothpick chewing but his name was probably changed so the film wouldn't have two characters named Harvey.
John Cusack's Hitman With A Heart in War Inc. is an expy of his character in the earlier film Grosse Pointe Blank, and almost every other character in the new film has an equivalent in the previous one.
Alex from Home Alone 3 is the expy of Kevin from the previous two movies.
Star Wars, a lot of the characters from the Prequel Trilogy are Expies of characters from the Original Trilogy (Even if both characters are actually in the original trilogy)
- Anakin Skywalker in episodes II and III is basically an Expy of his own son, even though he was also The Dragon (or debateably The Starscream) in episodes IV, V, VI and even the end of III.
- Qui-Gon Jin is The Obiwan TO Obi-Wan Kenobi, and is an expy of his own apprentice basically.
- Darth Maul is obviously an Expy of Darth Vader in a The Dragon sort of way. Count Dooku is also an Expy of Darth Vader, but he's actually got more in common with The Emperor, and is more of a The Starscream than a The Dragon. General Greivous is a bit closer to Vader; Darth Vader has trouble breathing, Grevious has a cough, and they're both cyborgs.
  - Word Of God says the three were used in foreshadowing, each one being an element of Vader. Maul as The Dragon who enforces the emperor's will, Dooku as a fallen Jedi, and Grievous as a cyborg with breathing problems (though he only got them after Mace Windu used the Force to crush his chest).
- This sort of thing is so common in the Star Wars Expanded Universe that you may well assume the Star Wars galaxy is heavily based on reincarnation, maybe through the Force. Just look at Han Solo via Atton Rand, Carth Onasi, Kyle Katarn (before the lightsaber), Corran Horn...
  - Atton Rand is an obvious deconstruction.
  - Don't forget Darth Malak, possibly the most obvious Darth Vader expy, and Cad Bane, an (unfortunately much more talkative) expy of Boba Fett.
In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, one Mogwai looks and acts very similarly to Stripe from Gremlins. The music sting, the way the camera zooms in and Gizmo's reaction all make it abuldantly clear to everyone including Gizmo that, for all intents and purposes, Stripe has been reborn. (Technically, both characters are brothers, as they both popped out of Gizmo's back after he got wet, and the New Stripe has black and white fur rather than blue and white, and after he becomes a gremlin, he has a reptilian frill rather than a Mohawk. But still undeniably an expy of Stripe.)
Terminator Salvation Marcus, in several ways, is an Expy of Arnold/the T-800, especialy in Terminator 2, and to a lesser extent, Kyle Reese in the first Terminator movie. Marcus is basically a Prototype for the T-800, as he actually has a metal endo skelton and his outsides are living tissue. Unlike the T-800, however, he still has a human brain and thinks he's human. There's numerous little bits of action that remind you of Arnold, he kind of looks like a younger, skinnier Arnold, at his execution you actually EXPECT him to say "I'll Be Back" as his last words because they were just talking about bring him back to life the the VERY PREVIOUS SCENE (Instead, he just shrugs when asked for any last words) and, amusingly, when the humans chain him up after discovering his metal skeleton, his wrists are chained to a barbell. But even WITHOUT Marcus, the movie has numerous little homages to the previous movies.
In Highlander 3, there was a black guy with a deep, rough Dr. Claw voice very similar to the bad guy in Highlander 1.
The Strangers With Candy film introduced Megawatti as an obvious expy for Orlando from the series because the actor who played him was too old to reprise the role.
Deliberately avoided in the Indiana Jones films. As one of Indy's characteristics was to be a Chick Magnet and as a result to have a new Love Interest in each movie, Spielberg and Lucas made their best effort to make any new girl as different as possible from the previous one. Kate Capshaw even had to dye her natural brown hair blonde to play Damsel Scrappy Willie Scott in Temple of Doom, as the also brown-haired Karen Allen had played Action Girl Marion Ravenwood in Raiders.
In the Marx Brothers film each brother plays a character with a different name but the same personality as the character he played in the other films.
- As do some of the recurring supporting actors, most notably Margaret Dumont.
Transformers II Revenge of the Fallen; In Transformers 1, of course, they couldn't have a giant robot turn into outdated '80s technology so they had an expy of Soundwave by taking one of Soundwave's tapes (Frenzy) and turning him into a CD player. In Revenge of the Fallen, they turn Soundwave himself into a satellite, and he sends another one of his tapes, Ravage, to Earth to spy on the humans. The whole Expy thing becomes a bit Meta, because Ravage spews a bunch of little metal balls which come together and form another character who is an expy of Movie 1's Frenzy!
- Ravage also has a compartment in his chest open to release The Doctor, just as the old Soundwave used to release cassette-Ravage.
- There's also Wheelie, who they make more interesting than he was in the Animated Movie by making him a bit more evil and a lot more perverted. He also has some similarities to both Frenzy and Rattrap from Beast Wars.
- Jetfire, bit of an Expy of Kup.
- Also, "The Twins" may or may not be Expies of Jazz, except while Jazz was kinda cool but happened to use slang that was 30 years out of date in the '80s, The Twins use modern slang, aren't nearly as cool, and put together STILL only have half the brain of Jazz. Or, maybe they're just expies of the two Ethnic Scrappy charactersfrom Transformers 1.
- Skids and Mudflap have NOTHING in common with Jazz. While Jazz was apparently based on hip-hop culture, the Twins are just a pair of immature idiots with pottymouths. NO real, racial, ethnic, or cultural marks.
Joe Don Baker's character of Texan CIA agent Jack Wade in Goldeneye is arguably an Expy of Texan CIA agent Darius Jedburgh in the British miniseries Edge of Darkness. Both were directed by Martin Campbell. Mercifully, neither characters have much to do with Mitchell.
Both Coraline and Mirror Mask are about a dark haired, odd, creative girl, who discover a strange fantasy world that is ruled by an Evil Counterpart of the girl's mother who wants to take over the girl's mind in a manner that turns her eyes black. Although Mirror Mask is a bit more complicated. There are a total of THREE versions of Helena's mother, TWO of them are in a coma, while in Coraline, the Antagonist is the Other Mother, the Dark Queen in Mirror Mask is really just worried about where her daughter is. The REAL antagonist is the Evil Counterpart of Helena, and the two are never even in the same universe at the same time!
Del Preston from Waynes World 2 is Danny from Withnail and I, and is even played by the same actor. This could be considered a Shout Out.
Léon is Victor from Nikita. Same actor, and they even share an euphemism for their job, "cleaner".
- Luc Besson has said that they're basically cousins.
- Winston Wolf, "the cleaner" from Pulp Fiction, is an Expy of the character played by Harvey Keitel in The Point of No Return — which was itself a remake of Nikita, thus tying all of these fellas together.
Al from Toy Story 2 and Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park are played by Wayne Knight, and they have similar personalities. They are both fat, disgusting, immoral (Al stole a child's beloved toy, for God's sake!), nerdy slobs. Karma bites both of them in the ass eventually.
- Both are of course an Expy from the original evil himself, Newman!
Victor◊ from Corpse Bride looks too much like grown-up Vincent◊, what was one of Tim Burton's first projects. The resemblance is even lampshated in the film when Mr Everglot acidentally calls him Vincent.
The Filipino superhero Captain Barbell is quite similar to Captain Marvel, except that he has no lightning power and that his wimpy alter ego has to lift a barbell over his head to transform.
Sort of a type-casting example with Paul Bettany. He recently was in a biopic on Charles Darwin, and some reviews noted his previous role as Stephen Maturin in film Master and Commander who comes across as somewhat similar to Darwin in his time on the Beagle (intellectual naturalist on a ship, interacts with giant tortoises at one point).
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer: The Movie, a mild Cult Classic movie version of the classic song, has a few of these. Clarice is replaced with Zoey, who was supposed to be named "Clarice" but they couldn't get the copyrights. Rudolph's rival Arrow looks very much like Fireball.
Michael Cera basically plays the same character over and over. His characters in Superbad, Juno, Nick And Norahs Infinite Playlist and Youth In Revolt all are essentially all Expies of each other.
- Ditto for Jesse Eisenberg, who is basically an older version of Cera. His character in Adventureland is basically like the guy from The Squid And The Whale growing up and graduating college. Zombieland is what'd happen if either one was stuck in a Zombie Apocalypse.
  - No mention of Jon Heder, who came before both Cera and Eisenberg. School For Scoundrels is basically Napoleon Dynamite learning from a watered-down Bad Santa, and Benchwarmers is Napoleon Dynamite playing little league baseball. Even his voice acting roles is pretty much Napoleon Dynamite as an overweight pizza boy (Monster House) and a pothead chicken Surfs Up.
- Ditto for Seth Rogen, who plays a fat clumsy pothead in pretty much all of his movies, and Jonah Hill, who plays mini-Seth Rogen in pretty much all of his movies.
- These are also be examples of Type Casting.
  - Subverted, hard, by Seth Rogen in Observe And Report, so much so that many saw his character as a Complete Monster. However, this also demonstrated considerable range, as his character was so completely different from any of the other characters he played.
In 2012, the main characters as well as plot elements are very similar to Steven Spielberg's The War Of The Worlds. For example, the father, played by Tom Cruise/John Cusack, sucks as his job. His ex-wife, played by Miranda Otto/Amanda Peet has encountered someone else, and their two kids played by Justin Chatwin/Liam James and Dakota Fanning/Morgan Lily don't like Tommy/Johnny as much as their new stepfather. And then disaster strikes.
- The scene with the arks may also resemble the ferrys.

Literature

In the many, many books of the Dragonlance series, any kender characters that appear are likely to be a direct Expy of Tasselhoff Burrfoot, since most of the race's members seem to have the same (bizarre) personality. Most of them end up being the Alien Scrappy of that particular book, but on some occasions, there have been some major subversions...
- And of course, the authors' next series, the Deathgate Cycle, includes a pretty blatant example of this trope in the form of bumbling would-be wizard Zifnab.
- Don't forget Zanfib, from another Margaret Weis/Tracy Hickman collaboration.
Half the main cast of These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer are Expys of the main characters in The Black Moth. They even have the events of TBM as backstory, and the Dukes of Andover and Avon share a nickname, "Satanas".
Pretty much every main/significant minor character in every Dan Brown book ever.
- Can a plot be expy'd?
Kane in the Ea Cycle is an expy of Kane from Karl Edward Wagner's stories.
- Furthermore, a lot of people and things in Ea Cycle have direct counterparts in the same author's earlier sci-fi series. Or So I Heard.
Intra-series example: In the Warhammer 40000 Horus Heresy novels, both Saul Tarvitz and Nathaniel Garro sort of come off as expies of Garviel Loken...
Intra-series example: In Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, all the female characters are pretty much expies of each other.
- Except the one that dresses like a guy. Kinda.
It's often asserted that Robert E. Howard's barbarian characters are expies of each other, though there are some fundamental differences between them. Still, one could view Cormac Mac Art, Cormac Fitzgeoffrey and Conan as cut from a similar cloth.
In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel Vampire Science, the Doctor is brought into the situation by Dr Carolyn McDonnell, a highly-motivated San Francisco doctor whom he met on a previous visit to the city (as established in the prologue). Dr Grace Holloway from The Movie was Exiled From Continuity at the time.
Almost every protagonist of Louis L'Amour's hundred-or-so-books is pretty much one of two guys:
- A Badass White guy from some place east of where the book is set.
- An Indian Brave who is just like the Badass White Guy except that a big deal is made about his race.
The Discworld book Equal Rites has an Archchancellor of Unseen University who is clearly a first draft of the later character Ridcully, particularly as both have somewhat romantic relationships with Granny Weatherwax. Also, it's possible to see Aziraphale of Good Omens as something of an expy of Carrot from the "Watch" books- both are extremely idealistic characters who rather than being the Wide Eyed Idealist, are rather clever, even cunning.
- Pratchett often plays this for comedy: we've been introduced to about five suspiciously similar versions of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. Sergeant Doppelpunkt and corporal Knopf (Colon and Nobbs) show up in The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents, and Igors are Expies of each other.
  - Literally, in case that wasn't clear. One of the defining characteristics of an Igor is that he has parts of several other Igors stitched onto his body to replace missing/faulty parts. When an Igor says he has his father's eyes, he means it.
- Good Omens also introduces a Death who is similar in many ways (though far from identical) to the Discworld's Death.
- The Patrician in early appearances (The Colour of Magic) doesn't look or sound like Lord Vetinari in the later books, except for his catchphrase ("Don't let me detain you") and his method of management, although Wordof God says he's been the same man the whole time. (Death's attitude also seems to change significantly from its starting point. Word Of God is that the characters have developed as Terry himself changed and matured as a writer.)
- In Wintersmith, Anoia the Goddess of Things that Get Stuck in Drawers has exactly the same personality (and chain-smoking habit) as Adora Belle Dearheart in the books about Moist.
  - She's also heavily implied to be the deity formerly known as Lela the Volcano Goddess ("the Storm God keeps raining on her lava"), who was explicitly compared with Adora Belle in Going Postal.
- First Mate Cox in Nation is exactly the same kind of Ax Crazy Complete Monster as Carcer, down to sharing some of the same dialogue.
  - Andy Shank is also described like this, although his age and lack of involvement in the plot keep him below the Moral Event Horizon for most readers.
- Mrs Tachyon in Johnny And The Bomb has the same manner of speaking as Foul Ole Ron. Thankfully, the Smell of Foul Ole Ron does not get an Expy.
Anthony Bourdain's Gone Bamboo features, as well as Mary Sues of himself and his then-wife, a few characters from his earlier A Bone in the Throat. In at least the first British edition of the later book, their names are the same as in A Bone in the Throat, in American editions, they have been changed, e.g. "Charlie Wagons" becomes "Donnie Wicks".
Roddy Doyle's The Van mostly features the same cast of characters as his earlier The Snapper; the film versions of the two books were made by different production companies, the makers ofThe Snapper had the rights to use them, so the names were changed in the second film.
All of Tom Holt's male protagonists are basically the same person. The women get a little more variety, but not that much.
Children's author Bill Peet started out as a Disney cartoonist and a degree of expyness can be seen between Dumbo, whom he created and the title character of Chester the Worldly Pig. Both begin lives at the circus on a bad note, mocked by the audiences and ill-treated by clowns, but later achieve happiness and success there through an extraordinary talent (flying with ears/body coloring which looks like a map of the world)
Harry Potter, Ginny (tough, non-nonsense, smart, red-haired girl) is just Lily but with brown eyes. James Potter and Sirius Black's young, teenage selves as seen in the 800-word prequel JK Rowling wrote for charity are completely interchangeable with Fred and George Weasley, who also go on to use the Marauder's Map (invented by James and Sirius and their friends), as well as one of them dying and leaving the other scarred for life. If you changed the names in the 800-word prequel, the story would fit exactly to Fred and George with the exception of physical descriptions, their dialogue has exactly the same patterns and brand of humour, making James and Sirius seem very shallow in development (at least, them in their youth. Similarly, it could be argued that the death of Tonks and Remus serves to make their son Ted an expy for Harry, whose parents were killed during the First Rise of Voldemort.
- The children in the epilogue all seem to be Expys to some extent - Lily wants to go to Hogwarts now despite being too young, Rose changed into her school robes ahead of time, Albus is worried he'll be in Slytherin...
David Eddings does this repeatedly, blatantly, and unashamedly... so blatantly, in fact, that it becomes a plot point, at least in-universe.
If you click on Robert A Heinlein you will see listed on his page his three most common character types.
Technically, mystery writer Dick Francis didn't reuse protagonists, but in terms of personality, they're all exactly the same guy.
- Yes, he did. Sid Halley (4 books) and Kit Fielding (2). How sad is it that I know this? But otherwise, yeah, they're all pretty much the same bloke.
The Inheritance Cycle is full of these (then again, it is Star Wars recycled in a fantasy setting, so it has to be)
- Brom is Obi-wan
- Eragon is Luke
- Murtagh is Han in the first book and Vader later on
- Orik is Han from when Murtagh leaves on
- Oromis is Yoda
- Arya is Leia (sort of)
- Nasuada is also Leia (more parallels)
- The Ra'zac are also sort of Vader
- Ajihad and Hrothgar are Rebel generals (Reekan, Jan Dodonna, etc.)
- Islanzadi is Mon Mothoma
- Galbatorix is Palpatine
- Morzan is also Vader
- The dragons are the Jedi teachings
- Other magic-users are non-Jedi force traditions
- The Riders' swords are lightsabers
Joel Rosenberg transplanted the characters of Durine, Kethol and Pirojil from his Guardians of the Flame series into the novel Murder In La Mut, which he co-wrote with Raymond E Feist. The whole book is basically an excuse to put Rosenberg's characters in Feist's world for one novel and let hilarity ensue.
Michael Grant co-wrote the Animorphs series with his wife, K. A. Applegate and transplanted the character of Marco into his new novel series Gone as Edilio. Both characters are somewhat short Hispanic youths with dry wits who are remarkably competent despite their laid back natures.
- Not to mention Dekka is Tate from Remnants except younger. The characters of Caine and Diana are reminiscent of Yago and 2Face from the same series respectively.
Given what's known about Jim Butcher's love of comics, Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files can be seen as an Expy of Spider-Man, with magic instead of radioactivity.
- Lord and Lady Placida are Expys of Aral and Cordelia Vorkosigan. Butcher has outright admitted this.
The whole point of the Meg Cabot novel Avalon High, where all the major characters are revealed to be reincarnations of King Arthur legend. The main character, Ellie, is originally thought to be the reincarnation of the minor character Elaine, the Lady of Shalott but is revealed to be the much more important Lady of the Lake.
This is lampshaded (as so many tropes are) in the Thursday Next books; a minor character mentions offhand that two literary characters seem very similar. In fact, they are the same character, but Thursday doesn't try to enlighten the speaker on the "economies of the Book World."
Oscar Wilde did this - the briefly-mentioned Baron von Arnheim (aristocratic, art-loving, corrupt, heavily implied to be gay) in An Ideal Husband is an obvious expy of the (ditto all of the above) Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Lord Illingworth from A Woman of No Importance differs from the other two only in being slightly less evil and slightly more attracted to women.
In the Beauty Trilogy, by Anne Rice, the character of Laurent is exactly the same as Lestat, minus the vampirism.
Margo of John Green's Paper Towns is essentially Alaska of Looking For Alaska. Though Margo is toned down from manic Alaska, the two have a similar purpose, the unreachable and mysterious object of affection for Q and Pudge (who are very similar and are largely considered author stand-ins).
Jane and her niece Eliza in Edward Eager's books.
Several of William Makepeace Thackeray's novels have female characters with a B. name who are The Vamp or a Femme Fatale (Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Beatriz in Henry Esmond, and a Blanche in Pendennis'').
PG Wodehouse lampshaded this in the preface to Summer Lightning, where he mentions a critic who claimed his last novel recycled "all the old Wodehouse characters under different names." Summer Lightning itself, the preface notes, neatly averts this by including all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names.
Laurence Kirkle in Beyond The Western Sea has a character arc that's very similar to Charlotte's in The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.
Turnip Fitzhugh in the Pink Carnation series resembles Bertie Wooster.

Live Action TV

iCarly: Some episodes feature parodies of celebrities.
- iCook has Ricky Flame (Bobby Flay).
- iFix a Popstar has Ginger Fox (Britney Spears).
- Try watching iCarly side-by-side with Reba and tell me that Spencer dosen't resemble Van in the least. They look kind somewhat similar, they're voices sound virtually identical, both are loveable goodball characters who have similar strange interests and Cloud Cuckoo Lander moments, PLEASE tell me i'm not the only person who sees the similarities!
J.T. and Toby from Degrassi The Next Generation are updated versions of Arthur and Yick from Degrassi Junior High, while Sean is an updated version of the earlier show's Rick. (Both Sean and Rick are Troubled But Cute, but the similarities go further — both live with their adult brother, both had an edgy relationship with a social-activist girl, etc.)
- Rick, in turn, is an expy of Griff on The Kids of Degrassi Street, who lived with his adult brother after his parents died. Wheels is also a partial expy of Griff, having been orphaned as well, having a nickname based on his last name, and being played by the same actor.
- For that matter, Emma starts out as an updated Caitlin (Emma dates Sean, Caitlin dates Rick, both are social-activist types). Ashley, however, is a bit of a subversion—while both she and Steph ran for class president and were friends with socially awkward girls, Ashley, unlike Steph, based her campaign on honesty.
  - There's also a parallel between the later show's Rick and the earlier show's Claude in regards to their interactions with Emma/Caitlin—both were rejected and ended up dying as a result (Claude by a deliberate suicide, Rick by his own gun after being calmed down from shooting up the school).
- Now that most of the cast were put on buses or just commuting, most of the characters introduced in seasons 7 and 8 are Expies filling in the roles the cast left open. Clare has Emma's strong morals, Alli is Manny except fiestier, Holly J fills in Paige's Libby spot (except Holly J isn't as sociable) among other examples.
- New character Declan Coyne is pretty similar to Gossip Girl's Chuck Bass, except Declan is just michevious and not nearly as contemptible.
The last story of the sixth season of Doctor Who] featured the War Chief. He's an evil, megalomaniac Time Lord who dresses in a dark Nehru jacket, sports Facial Hair of Evil and knows the Doctor from their days on Gallifrey. He's extremely camp, has no concept of personal space and offers the Doctor a half-share in the universe. Fast forward to Season Eight, where we are introduced to a new regular villain who's an evil, megalomaniac Time Lord, dresses in a dark Nehru jacket, wears a Beard of Evil and—oh, you get the point.
- And in the new series, companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams share quite more than a few traits with Sally Sparrow and Larry Nightingale from "Blink", a story Steven Moffat wrote before taking over as the head writer.
  - Rory is also Micky 2.0.
Most of the original cast of Saved By The Bell: The New Class were basically the old class with different actors. Apparently it didn't go over well, because the cast was largely overhauled early on.
Blackadder simultaneously subverts the Expy and takes it to a ridiculous extreme, with four distinct series revolving around essentially the same characters, with the same (or very similar) names, usually played by the same actors. And, of course, it's brilliant.
For Star Trek Voyager the creators wanted to bring back Nicholas Locarno, a character from a TNG episode. However, the character had been created by the writer of that episode and not by TNG's creators or executive producers (as was the case for recurring characters such as O'Brien or Worf, which could be reused). Because of this, the creators of Voyager thought they'd have to pay royalties to the writer of that episode every time they used the character, and that led them to create a new character similar to Locarno's named Tom Paris with a similar back story and who would be played by the same actor. To cover the transparent change, the creators said that they decided Locarno was unredeemable due to his actions in the episode, but Tom Paris's actions (which were more like Wesley's in the original episode) were less culpable. Interestingly, many years later a California court ruled that producers in a similar situation didn't have to pay royalties to a writer who created a character; had the producers of Voyager chosen to take the matter to court, they might have been cleared to use the character Locarno.
- B'Elanna was supposed to be Ro Laren. Apparently they wanted her to be on DS 9 (later replaced with Kira) and then tried again with Voyager (later replaced with B'Elanna) but the actress kept saying no.
- Also, TNG's Taurik becomes Voyager's Vorik, and keeps same actor. The Expanded Universe says they're twins.
- Decker and Ilia from Star Trek The Motion Picture were exported to Star Trek The Next Generation and became Riker and Troi.
Luka Kovacs of ER: For all intents and purposes, Doug Ross with a Slavic accent. (Spawning the Fan Nickname, "Dr. Rossavic")
The character of Doyle on Angel is rather similar to Whistler, a character who appeared in the season 2 finale of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Both are Irish, both are demons, both help Angel out, both serve {or served, in Doyle's case) as intermediaries for The Powers That Be, both are frequently sarcastic... Word Of God in fact says Whistler was originally intended as Angel's sidekick, but schedule conflicts with the actor caused them to use Doyle instead. Which creates a certain amount of overlap with Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
Topher from Dollhouse has certain similarities to Firefly's Wash, except that Topher's Affably Evil.
Chloe Sullivan on Smallville originally started as an Expy for Lois Lane (the actual Lois was introduced later). As she began to grow apart from Lois, her journalism career was downplayed and her computer skills evolved to their current Beyond The Impossible levels — making her now an expy for Oracle.
- Tess Mercer, in her first two appearances, was referred to as both "an obscure regional VP" (unfit for her job of taking over for Lex Luthor) and a "pitbull in Prada." The first was said to her while they were up in the Arctic. The second, after she had firmly assumed control of her bald boss's former position. That's right, it's Sarah Palin.
Number Six on The Prisoner is arguably an Expy of John Drake from Danger Man. (One could make the case that McGoohan's spy characters in the movie Ice Station Zebra and a 1975 episode of Columbo are also the same guy.)
- This has perennially been claimed ever since 1967 UK commercial telly viewers found themselves unwilling to seperate an established performer from his most famous character, but Number Six has no more in common with John Drake than he does with Longshanks or The Phantom's dad. The Columbo episode IS basically a pendant to The Prisoner, but Ice Station Zebra has absolutely no connection, unless you want to claim all the people an actor plays wearing a black jacket are the same person. That way lies madness.
  - Your Mileage May Vary. Drake, No. 6, and "Jones" (the Ice Station Zebra guy) are all spies, and the real names of No. 6 and Jones are never revealed. So while there's no explicit connection, it's not just arbitrary either.
Captain John Hart, Captain Jack Harkness's Evil Counterpart on Torchwood is clearly an Expy of Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer and is even played by the same actor, James Marsters. He acts a lot like pre-Badass Decay Spike (if not even more unhinged), and Jack even acts a lot like Angel around him.
The angel Castiel on Supernatural is an Expy of John Constantine. The show's creator, Eric Kripke, said that he wanted to be able to bring Constantine in for a couple of episodes and work with the Winchester brothers on a case, but it seems that idea fell through, so he created Castiel instead. Castiel's actor, Misha Collins, has even admitted that the character is based on Constantine.
Some people think Henrietta of NCIS Los Angeles is an expy of The Incredibles's Edna Mode. However, both are Expies of Hollywood costume designer Edith Head.
Hettie (to Callen): Just because you're an orphan doesn't mean you have to dress like one!
Babylon 5 has Marcus pointing out on-screen that how they are all similar to characters from Arthurian legend.
- Word Of God is that this was meant to foreshadow the reappearance of Anna Sheridan. It worked to some degree, as Marcus' wondering aloud at the end who was supposed to be Morgan Le Fay had people on Usenet opining that Anna Sheridan wasn't really dead.
Some of the new interns on Scrubs in season 8 seem to be Expies of the main cast.
- Katie Collins is explicitly nicknamed "Mini Elliot" (and is even caught making out with another intern in a pink bra in one scene, similar to what often happens to Elliot, who often takes her shirt off for one reason or another and is always wearing a different coloured bra every time).
- Derek Hill has some similarities to Turk, only more serious and even more arrogant.
- Dr. Denise Mahoney seems to be a mixture of all the meaner main characters (Cox, Jordon, Kelso, Janitor) with the body of the hotter ones (anyone who's ever slept with JD), and the morals of The Todd. Also she's a chubby chaser.
- Howie Geller is a mixture of JD, Doug and The Todd.
- Dr. Sonja "Sunny" Dey is almost exactly like the short Indian girl with the squeaky voice, only taller.
Also on Scrubsprisoner, Nurse Roberts friggin dies... and then the actress Aloma Wright comes back like five episodes later to play Nurse "Shirley".
The Tonight Show:
- Answer Man (Steve Allen) => Carnac the Magnificent (Johnny Carson) => Beyondo (Jay Leno) => In The Year 3000 (Conan O'Brien).
  - And Allen's "Answer Man" was said by some to be ~~stolen from~~ inspired by Ernie Kovacs' "Mr. Question Man" during the period when the two split hosting duties on the show.
- Green Car Challenge => Star in a Reasonably Priced Car.
The first season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer was practically a live-action Sailor Moon (years before there was an actual one). This leads to some interesting mental images: Sarah Michelle Gellar in a fuku, David Boreanaz in a tuxedo and domino mask, and Anthony Stewart Head as the voice of the talking cat.
Cole in Charmed is clearly an expy of Angel in Buffy. Reformed demon starts a love affair with female hero, then reverts to evil. Then good again. Then semi-evil (see season 2 Angel series). Aaron Spelling obviously agrees with the saying 'good writers borrow from other writers; great writers steal from them outright'.
The main characters in Unhappily Ever After were obvious expies of those in Married With Children. The main difference was that UEA replaced the family dog with a puppet. Since the two shows were created by the same people, they basically sold the same idea to two different networks.
An expy of Mac from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia appeared in two episodes of Lost as a member of the Others; he was even played by Rob McElhenney. It was pure genius. The first time he appeared as just an extra who was knocked unconscious by Kate. The next time was his slight ascension in which he displayed very Mac-like qualities, such as his manner of speech when talking about the Smoke Monster and complaining that Kate didn't remember attacking him in his first appearance. Of course this being Lost and not Philly, he didn't last long.
Bud Spencer (real name Carlo Pedersoli) currently stars in an Italian TV series where he plays a former police commissioner with a passion for cooking, who now owns and runs a restaurant in Ischia, an island near Naples. Given that he played Neapolitan commissioner "Piedone" Rizzo in four movies during the '70s, this latest character may be Rizzo after he retired from active duty.
Roy and Tom of The Old Guys are expies of Mark and Jeremy of Peep Show, with the same writing team.
Irwin Allen's Land Of The Giants features Alexander Fitzhugh, a Con Artist who is definitely similar to Zachary Smith, the Breakout Character from Allen's previous series Lost In Space.

Mythology

Many Catholic festivals where adapted from local ones to make Christianity more welcoming. Saints were comptemparies of the pagans that they converted. To say that they were based off local deities requires that they role played their lives.
Roman gods and goddesses were Expies of Greek gods and goddesses (such as Jupiter and Zeus, Venus and Aphrodite, Juno and Hera, Vulcan and Hephaestus, etc.)
- This is not strictly true as many of the Roman gods (notably Mars and Vesta) have different connotations and importance than their Greek counterparts.
  - More of a Hijacked By Jesus thing - the originally distinct Roman deities became, to warying degrees, assimilated to the Greek deities they were identified with.
Also, Aphrodite is a clear Expy of the Sumerian/Babylonian goddess Ishtar (Inanna).
Dayconawega, the American First Nations Jesus. Virgin mother, Disciples, and Back From The Dead.

Professional Wrestling

"Nature Boy" Ric Flair was an expy of "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers
- Flair would later get an expy of his own in "Nature Boy" Buddy Landel
Chris Benoit was an expy of Dynamite Kid.
- Bryan Danielson began his career as an expy of one, the other, or possibly both before some Divergent Character Evolution.
WWF's Kwang was an expy of the Kendo Nagasaki.
The Great Muta was an expy of The Great Kabuki
- TNA's Kiyoshi is an expy of Muta as well. Of course, some might say that TNA is an expy of WCW altogether.
  - Given who they have working there now (Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Eric Bischoff, Ric Flair, etc.) that seems about right.
For awhile WCW had a lot of expys of celebrities wrestling, which created a bunch of strange dream fights. For instance it is unlikely that Prince would ever have fought Liberace, but now you can see what it would have looked like with The Artist Formerly Known as Prince Iaukea and The Maestro
- Johnny B. Badd baby, whooo!
What do you get when you cross the promotion dominating goals of the nWo with the youth of the Natural Born Thrillers? The Nexus.
WWE and TNA have been having a little game of back and forth with the same types of characters. Granted, they're common tropes, but one tends to pop up a few weeks or months after the other, making it look more like a blatant combo of expy and Follow The Leader. Some Examples:
- Annoying Foreigner: Drew McIntyre and Desmond Wolfe
- The Libby: The Beautiful People and Lay-Cool
- Arrogant Pretty Boy: "Dashing" Cody Rhodes, Zack Ryder, and Magnus
And TNA is doing expy version of much older WWE characters. Orlando Jordan's playing with gay stereotypes bears a few similarities to Goldust. Mr. Anderson is the same type of loudmouth as the Miz (who is an expy of Anderson back when he was Kennedy.)

Tabletop Games

The Raven Queen from Dungeons And Dragons 4e core is basically a gender-swapped Expy for Kelemvor from Forgotten Realms.
The factions in Warhammer 40000 were originally little more than faction-level Expies for Warhammer Fantasy factions. Although they've tried to tone this down a bit — for instance, by phasing out the Squats without explanation, then finally saying they were just eaten by the Tyranids — there's still obvious parallels. Empire —> Imperium, High Elves —> Eldar, Dark Elves —> Dark Eldar, Undead —> Necrons, Chaos —> Chaos Space Marines, Greenskins —> Orkz, Dwarves —> Tau (less extreme than the Squats were, but there's still some obvious similarities). The Tyranids are an exception — there's been some awkward attempts to equate them with the Lizardmen, but it doesn't really work out.
- Especially since the Slann are more or less the Warhammer 40K equalient to the lizardmen, while the 'nids are more or less expies from Starship Troopers.
- The Tyranids also draw somewhat on Alien, while the Tau look an awful lot like the Trade Federation from The Phantom Menace, both in terms of character design and vehicles.
- An example of a smaller background race in the setting is the Hrud, who are practically expies of the Skaven in many ways. At least as far as the fluff regarding them gives away. Both are rat-like humanoids who live in sewers in various places, and both use warp-plasma based technology and are scavengers, plus the addition of similar social habits. It is highly unlikely that they will become any kind of major faction in the tabletop, however, since Games Workshop are heavily opposed to the idea of having Warhammer 40000 as simply Warhammer in space, due to the removal of the Squats, the original Dwarf expies.
- Also, the Imperial Arbitrators were recycled from an abandoned Judge Dredd tabletop game.
The Ravenloft game setting is swarming with Expy versions of classic characters from Gothic literature. Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein and his creation, Jekyll & Hyde, and so on: they're all there, sans serial numbers, disqualified from being Captain Ersatz only because the originals' copyrights all expired ages ago.

Theater

An Epileptic Trees theory has argued that the Antonio of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is the same as the Antonio of The Merchant of Venice. Both seem to be homosexual and it's argued that the character of the the former, who is a sea captain, was able to become a wealthy merchant thanks to help from Sebastian and Viola.
- Similarly, although the character in Romeo and Juliet is a ghost character (never appearing on stage), the Petruchio of that play could have been the same person as the one in Taming of the Shrew, given that both are from Verona.
  - Outside of all of the women dressing as boys, Iachimo from Cymbeline has a name essentially meaning "little Iago" and is something like that character as a Harmless Villain. There's also a degree of expytude between Henry IV and Julius Caesar which were written at about the same time. In both plays, an idealistic Anti Villain Hotspur/Brutus faces off an Anti Hero Magnificent Bastard Prince Hal/Marc Antony.
Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia, Ltd. features a Sir Edward Corcoran, KGB, who can be identified with Captain Corcoran of H.M.S. Pinafore - especially given that he sings part of the younger character's entrance song. Since Corcoran and Ralph Rackstraw switch places at the end of the earlier musical, it is a matter of some debate which of the two (if either) the older character is supposed to be.
- Also from Gilbert and Sullivan, some believe that Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore may be an older, more jaded version of Dick Dauntless in Ruddigore.
In Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hoffmannsthal's opera Der Rosenkavalier, the Marschallin and Octavian are versions of the Countess and Cherubino from The Marriage Of Figaro.

Video Games

Sara in Luminous Arc 3 is a complete Expy of Chiaki in the Minami-Ke anime: same voice actress, same voicing, same hair color, same body type, same attitude, and even uses Chiaki's catchphrase "BAKAYAROU" rather often.
In the Valve universe, we have the Scout from Team Fortress 2 and Ellis from Left 4 Dead 2. They're both baseball fans, they dress similarly, have similar personalities ("Grass grows, birds fly, the sun shines, and brotha...I hurt people" "Kill all sons of bitches, that's my 'fficial instructions") and use bats as weapons. They also have very thick accents from different parts of the US.
- There's also Gman from the Half-Life series and the Spy from Team Fortress 2. They both wear nice suits, act very proper and sophisticated (Spy's in game dialogue aside), and we can never seem to tell whose side they're really on. They're also seen carrying briefcases quite often (Gman's briefcase and the intelligence, which could be a whole other comparison altogether). Spy's ability to turn invisible with his watch could be compared to how Gman always seems to disappear whenever he wants.
Bastila is an Expy of Aribeth. Though she has far more character development and does things other than stand around angsting and Face Heel Turn (though she does those too).
In a more mainstream example, we have Samus from Metroid and Master Chief from Halo. Both are from military science fiction (FPS) games that wear full body armor, fight aliens and hardly ever say a word to anyone. They are both part of an elite group of fighters (Samus with the Bounty Hunters, Master Chief with the Spartans), and are considered the best within the groups. They have both fought 2 groups of aliens: A complex race of intelligent aliens, and a parasitic race of aliens (Samus with the Metroids and Space Pirates, and the Covenant and the Flood with Chief). Furthermore, both have kicked their asses so many times over, that the aliens have given nicknames to them ("The Hunter" for Samus and "The Demon" for Chief)
- Master Chief and Samus? What about Master Chief and the guy from Marathon? Think. Chief wears MJOLNIR Mark V armor. Marathon's unknown protagonist wears MJOLNIR Mark IV armor. Chief's signature weapon is the MA 5 B Assault Rifle, Marathon guy's is the MA-75 Assault Rifle. It goes on.
- And don't forget the crewmen from Halo and the BO Bs from Marathon.
- And the far more obvious example with Samus's personality (what little she has) being an expy of Ripley - slight maternal instincts, a personal vendetta against the enemy, a hatred of AI's.......
Elite Beat Agents is the king of this trope. The designs of all of the agents (save for Kahn...no, not "that" Kahn) are americanized versions of their Japanese counterparts in Ouendan, literally making them exported characters.
- And again in Ouendan 2 where the original ouendan have to face off against a completely different set of expies. If you were lucky enough to download the expansion you could play as the Elite Beat Agents as well. In the end Ouendan 2 wound up having SIXTEEN expies!
There's often an Expy-like relationship between player characters in video game sequels where you play as a 'blank' character that's supposed to be 'you'. For example, in the Fallout series, the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3 and the Chosen One from Fallout 2 are copies of the original Vault Dweller from Fallout. In System Shock, the Hacker from the first game is functionally identical to the Soldier from the second game. Also consider the player characters from the The Elder Scrolls series. Similar characters with similar backstories with similar actions available to them are designed to produce similar games with similar interfaces and similar gameplay modes. The list goes on with many series in this vein.
- Text adventures like Zork avoid it by having more detailed descriptions available.
Daxter is an expy for [Animaniacs Yakko Warner]]
Metal Gear Solid has Meryl Silverburgh, an Expy of the original Meryl Silverburgh, a character in Policenauts. The original Meryl, in turn, started life as an Expy-slash-Distaff Counterpart of Solid Snake from Metal Gear. All games were created by Hideo Kojima. He later lifted Benson Cunningham from Snatcher, gave him a celebratory Race Lift, and put him in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops.
- After the revelation of Solid Snake being an imperfect clone of his nemesis Big Boss, the appearances were further retconned. Pretty much lampshaded by how Naked Snake (Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops) is basically Solid Snake with an eyepatch and 1960s-1970s equipment, complete with the same voice actor, and further lampshaded in Portable Ops Plus with the non-canon appearance of "Old Snake," aka Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid 4...
- Let's not forget Dr. Pettrovich Madnar, who was the Metal Gear engineer in Metal Gear 1 and 2, was also the head of the Frankenstein Project in Snatcher.
- And then there's how Snake in the Solid series is a very obvious expy (name and looks, though less with personality) of Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell's character from Escape From New York). Though background and look-wise, Naked Snake (Big Boss) is more of an expy. With the eyepatch, hairstyle, clothes, scar on their body that resembles a snake, and the fact that both were hailed war veterans that lost faith in the corrupt higher-ups. Just look◊ at◊ them◊. Don't forget that in MGS 2 Snake uses the assumed name Lt. Junior Grade Plisskin.
  - In the original MSX Metal Gear, Snake's looks were lifted from The Terminator's Kyle Reese. In Metal Gear 2, he resembled John Rambo.
The common criticism of Tetsuya Nomura's work (apart from buckles and zippers) is that he really only knows how to draw a handful of faces, and just adds different eye colors and hair, and maybe mix-and-matches qualities from other character designs he's already done.
- Though it's a lot more subtle than most examples, Sora of the Kingdom Hearts series is technically an Expy of Mickey Mouse. They share a lot of similar personality traits, and his outfit in the first game was actually based on Mickey's classic look. Appearance-wise, Sora is also the expy of Sion Barzahd from one of Tetsuya Nomura's earlier games, The Bouncer, and lately he's gotten his own expy in the form of Neku from The World Ends With You.
- For a less subtle example from the same series, Axel from Kingdom Hearts II looks quite similar to Reno from Final Fantasy VII (skinny guy with bright red spiky hair and marks under his eyes) and acts like a (somewhat) less homicidal version of him. This isn't helped by the fact that they share the same Japanese, English, French, Spanish, and German voice actors. Nomura has said, "To me, Axel is an existence close to Reno, created in the same concept, but they are different people. Those two are different people but subconsciously alike. I wanted to see how it would be to have completely different characters that are really similar to each other but hold different kind of roles in different worlds."
- Vexen and Hojo. Both of them are creepy, pale mad scientists who possess a hight pitched cackling laugh and a penchant for doing experiments involving White Haired Pretty Boys. Larxene also somewhat resembles Elena of the Turks in appearance, and in personality, she has Elena's girly enthusiasm...but unlike Elena, it's enthusiasm for inflicting pain and misery. Creepy, eh?
- Hayner is very similar to Zell from Final Fantasy VIII - not just in looks, but his Hot Blooded personality and dislike of Seifer.
- Also, Terra resembles Zack Fair from Final Fantasy VII, even though Zack himself appears in the game as a cameo.
- Nomura designed Xion as an Expy of Kairi as a Red Herring, to throw fans off her actual origin.
- Here's another: He's The Lancer to his best bud, and early portions of the first game hinted at some kind of Love Triangle. He becomes a Rival Turned Evil, but eventually gets over his Face Heel Turn and spends a large portion of the series as The Atoner. He realizes his weaknesses and confronts his Enemy Within, accepting his darkness and growing stronger from it. Now who am I talking about? Riku or Kain? This could very well be intentional, since Nomura said in an interview relating to Dissidia Final Fantasy that the character he most wished was in the game but wasn't was Kain, and that Kain will definately be in the sequel if it ever comes around. Nomura's a Kain fanboy.
- Xehanort, whether it's as Master Xehanort, Xehanort the Deceptive Disciple, Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, or Xemnas, comes off as the bizarre lovechild of Exdeath, Kefka, and Sephiroth. Let's see... White Haired Pretty Boy? Yup. Complete Monster and Nietzsche Wannabe? Check. Omnicidal Maniac? Hoo boy! Large Ham? "DARKNESS!" A God Am I? In spades. The list goes on... And don't even get me started on Xemnas's use of ~~THE VOID~~ nothingness.
Yoshitaka Amano enjoys reusing character designs and design elements. (He just doesn't get called out on it - at all_ Let's see...
- Lenna's◊ and Krile's◊ designs, both from Final Fantasy V. Their FMV◊ renders◊ are even worse about this. They are both preceded by Final Fantasy IV's Rosa◊, the original Amano-pretty-blonde-lady-in-a-leotard-a-cape-some-sashes-and-boots.
- The unnamed Warrior/Knight depicted in Amano's early illustrations for Final Fantasy I looks quite a bit like a proto-Cecil. The first Dark Knight in the series, Leon, looks like this◊. The second, pre-Heel Face Turn Cecil, looks like this◊.
- Lovely blonde princess rescued from the Big Bad by the hero and his party, who afterward expresses some attraction to the hero. Who am I talking about—Princess Sara◊ from Final Fantasy I, or Princess Hilda◊ from Final Fantasy II? To compound that, Cosmos' design◊ from Dissidia Final Fantasy was explicitly based on Princess Sarah from the first game.
- The Most Triumphant Example of recycling designs from Final Fantasy II for Final Fantasy IV has to be Ricard◊ and Kain◊, both surnamed Highwind. Look at those pictures. What's more, a Mythology Gag that's All There In The Manual is that Kain's father is named Ricard...and Ricard's son is named Kain.
- Compare the main heroine of Final Fantasy VI, Terra◊, with the above-mentioned Lenna and Krile. She's also a near-clone of fellow heroine Celes in gameplay, although after all the above examples, their visual similarity◊ is not that pronounced, as long as you're not dealing with their FMV◊ renders.◊
- Setzer is wearing◊ Faris's coat.◊ In Amano's concept◊ for Sephiroth (yes, he did the original concept, really), that long black coat reappears, slightly less baroque this time.
- Don't forget how Amano has a fondness for pale skin (May be justified with Cecil, given that Lunarians can have pale skin), frizzy white hair, spiked armour, catsuits, capes, eye shadow and black-blue lipstick. The CG-I renders for Final Fantasy IV used for the art illustrate it perfectly. Course, leave it to Fan Dumb to insist that all of his characters are 100% original.
Beyond the visual designs of Nomura and Amano, Final Fantasy recycles a lot of character concepts from game to game. In any given game there's a good chance your main character has Laser Guided Amnesia and is gonna fall in love with a Staff Chick. During the game you'll likely to meet up with a Chivalrous Pervert, a woman who is last of her kind, A Hot Chick With A Sword, a stoic badass, an elderly mage, a Genki Girl, a Tagalong Kid, and a female who seems to exist only for fanservice. On the villain side you have The Dragon, who might be a Rival Turned Evil, a Quirky Miniboss Squad, and the Big Bad who leads The Empire. There's a good chance at least one of them is Brainwashed. The Big Bad will either be an Evil Sorcerer clad in Spikes Of Villainy, or a Bishonen Woobie who may just be a Well Intentioned Extremist, and either way will have at least one Xanatos Gambit in motion. The final boss will always be either an Omnicidal Maniac or an Eldritch Abomination.
- All three SNES Final Fantasy main characters are half-breeds of two different worlds.
- Paine is stated to be a female Squall.
  - Ditto Lightning for Cloud.
- Tropes are not bad! We are talking about the Final Fantasy Series, they share thematic ties and more. Though it can't be argued that the characters aren't expies, it comes out rather natural.
Xenosaga just crawls with Expies from the earlier Xenogears; not surprising, since they were mostly developed by the same people & it is hinted several times that 'Saga is actually a prequel to 'Gears. The best example is probably Jin Uzuki, who even shares his surname with his predecessor Citan Uzuki (even if the latter is only an alias). Mai Magus & her Robot Buddy Leupold are a rare example of a double-expy, as the are based on Maria Balthazar & Siebzehn from Xenogears who are in turn based on Shotaro Kaneda & Tetsujin 28. In fact, more than half of the 'Gears expies that appear in 'Saga are not characters, but mecha.
- Of course, when you take a closer look, Jin is actually a brutal subversion. While he manages to maintain a similar air of unflappability most of the time, as we learn more of his back story it becomes painfully clear that the fact is Jin Uzuki failed spectacularily at almost every single thing that made fans accuse his predecessor of being a Canon Sue.
- Nephilim is an Expy of Elly from Xenogears, which is made more obvious when she grows up in the ending of episode 3. Elly herself may or may not be an Expy of Elle, from Terranigma, who is similar to Elly both in name and appearance.
Elzam von Branstein in Super Robot Wars is often thought as an Expy of Char Aznable, starting from his Ace Pilot skills, tendencies to paint their Humongous Mecha in their preferred custom color, all who are arguably faster than the usual non-customized mecha. And lastly, their Paper Thin Disguise alter egos, with only sunglasses (Ratsel Feinschmecker and Quattro Bajeena, respectively).
- Curiously, Elzam's Ratsel disguise is far more of an expy of the Quattro disguise than Elzam himself is to Char. In fact, beyond the blonde hair and exceptional skills, Elzam's real self has fairly little in common with Char. Yet, once the shades come on, Ratsel and Quattro might as well each be a Paper Thin Disguise for the other.
- Also, the Huckebein series of Humongous Mecha most certainly do not resemble the titular mecha of a certain long running mecha franchise. The fact they're designed by one of Gundam's more common mechanical designers is completely unintentional.
- The Original Generation of Super Robot Wars really run on lots of Expies. Super Robot Wars Z introduces us to Asakim Dowin, a darker Expy of Masaki Andoh, justified that he was one of the early original character designs in the beginning of the franchise. Their expy qualities come mainly from their voice actor (Hikaru Midorikawa), drive on revenge and the fact the Shurouga (Asakim's mecha) is pretty much a black/anti-Cybuster (Masaki's mecha): similar attacks, but with added sadism for the Shurouga. That, and while Masaki's just a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold, Asakim's a totally sadistic bastard (not nearing a Psycho For Hire or an Ax Crazy fella...but still...)
  - Reiji Arisu and Xiaomu, the original characters from Namco x Capcom, are awfully close Expies of Kyosuke Nanbu and Excellen Browning from Super Robot Wars Compact 2/Impact. Not surprisingly, both games had the same director.
  - Monolith Soft, the developers of Namco x Capcom, then made Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier, which features gender-flipped Expies of Kyosuke and Excellen, a regular Expy of Lamia, plus guest-stars Reiji, Xiaomu, and KOS-MOS herself (also including T-ELOS). The aforementioned director that made Namco x Capcom was involved in this too, so it's no wonder.
  - Strictly, they're not gender-flipped: they're name-flipped. Kaguya Nanbu is the Expy of Excellen, and Haken Browning takes after Kyosuke. Aschen Brodel shouldn't at all remind you of Lamia, but the story justifies it with her being W07, Lamia's predecessor, and basically a combat version of her. Oh, and the Endless Frontier crowd have Kyosuke, Excellen and Lamia's Leitmotifs.
  - The sequel Endless Frontier EXCEED introduces Aledy Nassh, a blatant Folka Albark on foot, with a different hairstyle. He also comes along with an Ialdabaoth Expy painted black.
  - By the way, here's a list of that line of expies: Aledy is the expy of Folka, who is the expy of Kenshiro, who is an expy of Bruce Lee. Ooh, boy...
  - Subverted with Neige Hausen in EXCEED: she may have the "Fairy Dancing" theme song and the Royal Heart Blaster Combination Attack with the Fee-Kleid, the mecha expy of the Fairlion, but she isn't the expy of Super Robot Wars Original Generation's Shine Hausen...and that's before considering how much Fetish Fuel Neige induces.
Fire Emblem: Pick an archetype, any archetype: Jeigan, Kain, Abel, Oguma, Nabarl, Est, Rena, and Julian seem to have counterparts appear in every game, with some (Nabarl, Jegian and even more arguably Abel) arguably having more than one (Jeigan in Mystery of the Emblem/The Sword of Seal with Jeigan/Alan in Mystery of the Emblem and Marcus/Zelot in The Sword of Seal, Nabarl with Rutger/Fir in The Sword of Seal and Joshua/Marisa in The Sacred Stones, and Abel with both Geoffrey and Oscar filling the role compared to the Kain Keiran in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.)
- It gets interesting when they have similar/the same Backstories. Kashimu from Mystery of the Emblem and Fir from The Sword of Seal were similar, while Oguma from Mystery of the Emblem and Deick from The Sword of Seal were the same. Kain and Abel in The Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light became Alan and Lance from The Sword of Seal — they're identical. That's just some between the third and sixth games. Really, they all stem from the first/third game.
- Going beyond just archetypes: Klein, from Sword of Seals, is of noble blood, joins the party as a Level 1 Sniper, is a stern but loving big brother (to Clarine), and can have arelationship with a subordinate who is a Pegasus Knight (Tate/Thite/Thito). All of these are also true of Sacred Stones' Innes (replacing Clarine and Tate with Tana and Vanessa).
Players of Street Fighter III might notice that many of the characters have an uncanny resemblance to past characters, mostly those from Street Fighter II. Let's count them down shall we?
- French Hypocrite Remy has the same moveset as Air Force Soldier with an Army Uniform Guile, except that Remy throws his Sonic Booms (which are smaller but otherwise look identical) one-handed. Incidentally, Guile's 'other' Expy from the Alpha series (Charlie) would also throw his Sonic Booms one-handed. Of course, due to the continuity, Guile is technically Charlie's Expy...
- Failed experiment Necro is a mixture between Yoga guru Dhalsim and the green-and-orange apeman Blanka.
- Urien (and, by extention, Gill) is really just a magnetism-based Sagat with a few new moves.
  - Uh...no. If anything, Seth is the progenitor (even though he's from a later game).
- Ken's apprentice Sean is a better version of joke character Dan, something that's noted in the games.
- African princess Elena is an all-kicks version of British amnesiac agent Cammy.
  - Eh? Other than being seriously underdressed, not getting this. Pretty much just a typical ganguro a la K' who does Capoeira.
- Dudley, the African-British gentleman boxer, is often accused of being a pastiche of the ridiculously incompetent black guy Balrog, but he's really an all-punches version of Eagle from the original Street Fighter, though he does have one of Balrog's moves.
  - The Eagle in Capcom vs. SNK 2 was a massive overhaul based (kinda) on Dudley, not the other way around. Interestingly enough, it's someone from a completely different franchise, Vanessa, who's (kinda) taken after him.
- Wrestler dude Alex is based off Proud Warrior Race Guy T. Hawk (and against Hugo, a Captain Ersatz of Hulk Hogan as well). His design is also based on Biff Slamkovich from Saturday Night Slam Masters, whose name was incidentally Aleksey Zalazof in the Japanese version ("Aleksey" is the Russian form of "Alexander").
- German Gigantic Wrestler Hugo is, quite obviously, based off of Russian Gigantic Wrestler Zangief, though he also has an origin as an enemy character named Andore in Final Fight,who based off the Original Gigantic Wrestling Master, Andre the Giant.
- Q = Unwiedly robotic Balrog with slightly Cracker Jack-ish overtones.
- Zangief himself is an expy of Haggar from Final Fight, who came out a year before the original Street Fighter II. The manual for the SNES version even lampshaded their similarities by claiming that Zangief copied his moves from Haggar's. Haggar returned the favor by copying Zangief's spin pile drive in Final Fight 2 and even got a few original moves for Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II.
Capcom does this all the time. Morrigan Arnsland (sexy Akuma), Victor Von Gerdenheim (Zangief/Dhalsim/Blanka mashup) Hideo Shimazu (heavyset middle-aged Ryu), Gouken (non-creepy Raizo Kiya), and El Fuerte (El Stingray on speed), just to name a few.
In Samurai Warriors, the spinoff of the hack and slash series Dynasty Warriors, Sanada Yukimura has a lot of similarities with Zhao Yun, starting from being the pretty poster boy with similar faces, spear as their preferred weapon, and their personalities as a generic soldier, but powerful general. And when both series crossed over, a lot makes comments just how similar they are.
- Ditto for Cao Cao and Oda Nobunaga, who encounter each other in at least two cutscenes in both games; the first game lampshaded this in dialogue as well.
The primary (male) character of any Pokemon game is remarkably similar to the original protagonist, Red.
- Similarly, Wes◊ from Pokemon Colosseum gets his own Expy, Michael◊, in the sequel Pokemon XD. Not all the fans were happy.
- Brendan isn't much of an expy of Red, he possibly has white-and-black hair. Their personalities are supposedly similar, from the small hints we've gotten on Red's personality (be it from the manuals, his Brawl counterpart, or ingame).
- There's also Lyra◊ and Kris◊, if you don't think Lyra is a redesign.
- With Generation V around the corner, the starters were revealed on various Pokemon sites. The Water-type starter for this generation, Mijumaru, vaguely resembles Piplup, the Water-type starter from the previous generation. Notice◊ anything?◊
Many of the COs in Advance Wars: Day of Ruin are similar in personality and/or abilities to those from the previous games. Partially justified as there are only so many abilities that are helpful to boost.
- Will is a ground-combat expert who can grant movement boosts to his units, similar to Jake in Dual Strike.
- Lin is a serious CO who specializes in Fog of War situations, much like Sonja.
- Tasha is an aerial combat specialist who joined the war because of someone else in the family, like Eagle.
- Penny is a Creepy Child who enjoys destruction and can take advantage of natural conditions, similar to Lash.
- Nell from the original Advance Wars was already an expy of Caroline from Super Famicom Wars (both being "Lucky Girls", even Nell's Japanese name, "Catherine", sounds similar to "Caroline"), while rich-boy Colin is based on Billy Gates. Oddly enough Sensei (Yamamoto in Japan) is not an expy of Mister Yamamoto from Super Famicom Wars, who is much closer to Kanbei than anyone else.
Several characters in The Legend Of Zelda series are reprised in different eras with slightly different names, as well as, to a certain extent, Link and Zelda themselves.
- Marin and Tarin from Link's Awakening became Malon and Talon in Ocarina of Time and other games- also note that Marin was originally a semi-Expy of Zelda herself while Tarin was one of Mario.
  - In Twilight Princess, Ilia is a farm girl (like Malon) who has a variation of Epona's Song as her theme. So Ilia is an Expy of Malon, who is an Expy of Marin, who is an Expy of Zelda. That's right, people, The Legend Of Zelda has Expies of Expies of Expies. Whew!
- Prince Richard from Link's Awakening, himself a cameo from a Japan-only Game Boy game, became Ralph in Oracle of Ages.
- Nintendo Power ran a 12-part manga based on A Link To The Past with the art drawn by Shotaro Ishinomori of Cyborg009 fame. This manga added a new character named Roam who could have been Jet Link's twin.
- And let's not forget Majora's Mask. Almost all of the significant characters are Expies of Ocarina of Time characters. In some cases, the characters had names in Majora's Mask but not Ocarina of Time, and the Majora's Mask names would become canon in later cameo appearances, even when the characters act more like their Ocarina of Time incarnations (Anju, Mamumu Yan, and Mr. Guru-Guru all got this treatment, for example.) In fact, Gorman got a Minish Cap cameo, even though Gorman was actually an Expy of a named character (Ingo) who was, himself, an Expy-of-sorts of a character from another franchise (Luigi).
- The Legend Of Zelda Spirit Tracks has Malladus as the main villain, who is an extremely obvious Expy of Ganon. Not mentioning the Ganondorf like face on his Demon Train form, he possesses Zelda in one stage of the final battle, and in the final stage (by possessing Cole apparently), he becomes a beast-like creature who looks nearly identical to Beast Ganon from Twilight Princess down to the orange hair colour. He's also defeated with a sword through the head eventually, and his depiction in the intro story has a remarkable resemblance to that of Ganon in The Wind Waker.
Lots of Expys of Mega Man Battle Network characters are in Mega Man Star Force, mostly in Geo's circle of friends: Bud Bison is an Expy of Dex, and Sonia Strumm is an Expy of Mayl (Pink theme, ally and crush of Mega Man, etc.), and Luna Platz is an expy of Yai. In the second game, combine the 'rival' and white hair aspects of Chaud/Protoman, with the Evil Loner Badass and affinity for purple auras of Bass, and throw in a pinch of The Only One Allowed To Defeat You, and you get Solo/Rogue.
- Another Star Force theory makes Luna the Expy of Mayl, while Strumm is the Expy of Roll.
  - Really, a lot of the Expyism in Star Force involves two Battle Network characters having some traits combined into Star Force characters.
- This is just a few of the expy examples. The amount of Mega Men in the series is absurd (ZX actually makes this a title), and Roll has an Expy in Legends.
- Based on what little we currently know of them, the sister/brother pair Quentia and Jack of Star Force 3 are quite blatant expys of Pandora and Prometheus, right down to the base personalities (Emotionless Girl and Blood Knight, respectively), and elemental affinities.
- Mega Man 9's Splash Woman is a expy of Mega Man Zero's Leviathan.
  - Not to mention Tornado Man being one of Harpuia.
- There's also Model A in Mega Man ZX Advent. Both his appearance and personality are strikingly similar to that of Axl in the Mega Man X series. He's actually the biometal for Albert, a completely different character.
- Concrete Man bears a striking resemblence to Guts Man.
- And let's not forget that, being the very first Sequel Series in the Mega Man mythology, Mega Man X would technically be the first character to be a blatant expy. Although, in an ironic twist, he only existed because of that status.
Warcraft III's scenario and characters seems to be Expying Starcraft, only with some Gender Flip touched in. In a world where Humans Are Bastards, we have one 'only good human'; Raynor and Jaina; who used to be friends with another human that fell to The Dark Side (through Mind Control;) Kerrigan and Arthas. Raynor/Jaina then goes on to leave their usual human companies and team up with Proud Warrior Races (Protoss/Orc, Tauren and Night Elf) against the army of The Dark Side (Zerg/Undead), even though they fought against each other in the past, halting a world apocalypse, all these are chronicled in the first part. Then the Expansion comes, and then Kerrigan/Arthas takes the center stage, working their way up to become the new embodiment of evil (Queen Bitch Of The Universe/New Lich King).
- Sylvanas is pretty much Kerrigan with a different name.
  - To put it into perspective, what happened to Kerrigan was against her will and hated what she had become but nevertheless was ambitious, powerful and angry enough to embrace becoming the Queen Bitch of the Universe. Sylvanas was transformed against her will and she too hated what she became but could not embrace it, leading her to split from the Scourge and seeking her own path. Arthas was already ambitious and had a vengeful side to him that caused him to cross to the Scourge more or less willingly and embrace what he became, turning to the Lich King
3/4 of the party from Earthbound Zero and Earth Bound (Ness, Paula, and Jeff) are extremely similar to their predecessors (Ninten, Ana, and Lyoyd). Ness and Ninten are virtually identical in appearance.
- There are also several characters in Mother 3 who appear to be very similar to previous characters: However, they are almost exclusively NP Cs.
Masked magician Guile from Chrono Cross is an interesting case. He's based off of Magil, a similar masked magician from the other sequel to Chrono Trigger, the Japan-only Radical Dreamers, who turns out to be Magus from the first game, keeping an eye on his sister. Guile was meant to have a similar reveal in Chrono Cross, but that plot point was dropped in favor of focusing on the other 44 playable characters, so the character was re-written as an enigmatic spellcaster...an act that infuriates scythe fans to this day. In Japan, he was named Alf, after Magus' cat, Alfador.
- There's also Glenn, a green-haired knight who, like Frog from Chrono Trigger, rises from obscurity, claims a legendary sword, and kicks ass and takes names. The major difference is that this Glenn isn't an amphibian.
  - He even shares a dual tech called X-Strike with the silent protagonist: but another key difference is that while Frog is almost absurdly loyal to the Guardian throne, even after he stops being a knight, Glenn betrays the Dragoons to help Serge.
- Then there's Leah, an expy of Ayla. In the best ending, she even mentions that she'll be naming her daughter Ayla.
- ...And Luccia, an expy of Lucca.
Another criticism of Akira Toriyama's artwork is how similar a lot of his characters look, in not only just the manga he writes, but also the video games he does the art for. Again, ignore how hard it can be to create a bunch of unique faces period, given how much Akira Toriyama actually does.
- In Chrono Trigger, Crono looks like a brown-haired Medieval Goku, Marle looks an awful lot like Chichi, and Lucca looks like Bulma...at least, until you spot someone who looks even MORE like her...
- Dragon Quest is full of characters with similarities to other characters by Toriyama.
  - Lessee, Nimzo/Mildrath's first form in Dragon Quest 5 looks an awful lot like a Namekian, doesn't he?
  - The final boss of VI, in his first form at least, looks like the Master Roshi from hell, or an incredibly demented Dr. Gero.
  - Jessica in VIII looks very similar to Marle, doesn't she?
  - Shu could practically act as Gohan.
  - This was probably intentional in IX, but you can actually make the characters in the game look like Android #17 and Android #18, as well as Lucca, Crono, Goku, Shu (Pretty much almost everyone from Blue Dragon)...
In Shadow Hearts From The New World, Anne Lafitte looks a lot like Anastasia from Covenant.
- To say nothing of Lady and Killer, whose blatant similarities to the main characters from the previous games caused quite a bit of speculation among fans. Essentially: Killer looks like Yuri with a bad haircut, Lady looks like Alice ... with a bad haircut, Killer has similar dialogue, a similar fighting style, and a similar relationship to Lady, who serves a role very much like Alice's. All of this is probably more than coincidental, given the popularity of the couple from the first two games, but it may have made Lady and Killer unintentionally sympathetic antagonists.
  - Some fan theories actually do assume that Lady and Killer actually are Yuri and Alice, albeit Reincarnated, as the fan-accepted ending of Covenant is where Yuri dies and reunites with Alice.
Harvest Moon shamefully plays this to the hilt, deriving many of its NPCs from earlier versions (or even direct copies!) of the same characters. Particularly shameless in Magical Melody and Harvest Moon DS, which added only a handful of new characters and pulled its entire list of normal marriage candidates (i.e. not goddesses, witches, or gender-bending rivals) from older Harvest Moon games.
- One of the weirder ones is Pierre from Island of Happiness/Sunshine Islands/Frantic Farming, who is the Gourmet from Back To Nature and others as a Cute Shotaro Boy instead of a grotesque Gonk.
Sakuya could be considered an expy of Yumeko from Mystic Square, the last of the first-generation Touhou games. Sure, her hair, eye, and clothing color are different and she lacks the timehax, but for there to be two knife-toting maids as stage 5 bosses and Battle Butlers in two consecutive games is awfully suspicious. But then, the first-generation Touhou games seem to have been all but forgotten by the creator.
- You shouldn't forget that Yumeko is sort of an expy of Mugetu from Lotus Land Story, except she's an Extra (Mid)Boss.
- More recent Touhou expies include Minamitsu Murasa and Byakuren Hijiri, from Touhou 12 (Undefined Fantastic Object), who share a number of similarities to Chiyuri Kitashirakawa and Yumemi Okazaki, from Touhou 3 (Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream). Both Minamitsu and Chiyuri are young-looking sailor girls; Byakuren and Yumemi are their older superiors. Indeed, one fan hypothesis prior to the release of Undefined Fantastic Object was that Yumemi would be returning (due to her connection to spaceships).
Blaz Blue, being a Spiritual Successor to Guilty Gear, has a number of these:
- Ragna the Bloodedge, the White Haired Pretty Boy version of Sol Badguy with only two belts, and uses demonic powers instead of fire.
- Ky Kiske - Lighting - Knight In Shining Armor + Knight Templar + Ice + Total Asshole = Jin Kisaragi.
- Iron Tager - Mecha-Potemkin.
  - He behaves like Potemkin, but looks more like Auron if he were a cyborg ork.
- Arakune: Take Zato-1, replace his Shadow Powers at the cost of Eyesight with Incomprehensible Knowledge at the total loss of Sanity.
- Bang Shishigami: Chipp Zanuff, take two.
- Litchi Faye Ling: Jam Kuradoberi's nature (and Instant Kill) + I-No's dressing style + Bridget's playing style + Millia Rage's story connections.
- Actaully it seems that basically,Makoto is the sucessor to Jam.Whereas Litchi is the sucessor towards Millia in terms of playstyle/character.
- Nu-13: Guilty Gear X-era Dizzy. With Justice's Power Armor. Or Cinque with Anubis-like armour.
Persona 4's Rise Kujikawa, on first glance, looks like Nena Trinity with different hair color and no freckles. While that alone doesn't instantly make her an Expy, it is later revealed that Rise also has the similar cheery, flirtuous personality which functions as a mask (though what they mask is different: Rise is a good girl deep down, and Nena is a Yangire). Rie Kugimiya.
- Naoto looks almost exactly like the main character from Persona 3, except that she wears a hat and that the right side of his (really her) face isn't covered in bangs. Naoto even twirls the gun she uses in battle, much like how the main character from Persona 3 does during a summoning sequence.
  - The hat along with the detective aspirations are a Shout Out to Raidou Kuzunoha. The line of Naoto's sideburns also closely resembles Raidou's.
- The "Spacy Girl"'s personality is rather reminiscent of Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga.
Nel Zelpher from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time has a very similar appearance and fighting style to Fear/Phia from the first Star Ocean. They also tend to act in very not-stereotypically-feminine ways, although it's different for each — Nel tends to be cold and distant, while Fear/Phia is gruff and aggressive.
- To emphasize this, Phia's combat style in the PSP version is altered to make her even more like Nel, swapping her twin-dagger throwing basic attack for melee twin dagger attacks.
Donkey Kong Jungle Beat did this on an epic scale to the characters from the DKC series, replacing Diddy Kong with The Helper Monkeys, Rambi with Hoofer, Enguarde with Orco, Squaks with the Helibirds and Flurl, amongst others. The fans of the Rareware games were not amused.
Cuisses, the Team Pet who can eat skill stones to fuse them from Jeanne D Arc is an Expy of the Team Pet Toady, who can eat weapons to fuse them from Rogue Galaxy. They're basically identical little purple frogs with similar plot and gameplay roles. The difference amounts to "one talks, and the other makes cute noises", and both games are by developer Level 5.
Parker from the original Red Faction and Alec Mason from Red Faction: Guerrilla are remarkably similar. They look quite a bit alike, and are both The Quiet One, just short of Heroic Mime, who are pulled into a role as hero and figurehead leader of the titular Red Faction through circumstance rather than choice.
Guy Cecil from Tales of the Abyss IS Flynn Scifo's replica. Their faces look almost exactly the same (eyes). Personality, not so much. But they both have a sense of justice (though one not as much as the other), and are both the hero's best friend.
- Actually, this should be reversed. Abyss came before Vesperia, so Flynn is Guy's replica. In fact, the Vesperia art book even goes so far as to point this out by showing Guy's chibi on the page with Flynn's chibi. Namco tried getting around this in the Tales of Vesperia PS 3 port, by giving Flynn Luke's costume, but it doesn't really help (and they still gave Flynn a wetsuit-style swimsuit, which is the same that Guy wears).
- The Tales series overflows with Expies. Pretty much every character in a Tales game from the last decade or so is either an evolution of an earlier Tales character or a fusion of two of them.
  - Depends on who does the art, though. Luca in Tales Of Innocence DOES look a little like he could be a younger Senel Cooldge and Richard does look a little like Will. (Rex Hasta even looks a bit like Vaclav...albeit more insane.)
Albus in Castlevania Order of Ecclessia a clear Expy of Balthier from FinalFantasyXII. Not only do they look, and dress◊ almost exactly the same◊, but they also fight with the same weapon. Unfortunately they don't act the same way, because Albus is a little too emotional to be on any caliber with the capital of cool that is the Sky Pirate.
Willy's bodyguard Raymond in Double Dragon Advance is based on the nameless final boss from the second NES game. While the Mysterious Warrior's fighting style from Double Dragon II was called "Gen-Satsu-Ken" (Phantom Murder Fist), Raymond's style is known as "Gen-Setsu-Ken" (Phantom Interception Fist).
The Mousemallow species from Viva Pinata is probably inspired in Chu Chu from Revolutionary Girl Utena. They even share the same color, purple. take◊ a look◊.
Elyon in Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter is to Fou-lu in Breath Of Fire IV as Zechs Marquise is to Char Aznable. And yes, this is even Word Of God; the creators actually admitted in the official Dragon Quarter artbook that Elyon was meant as an Alternate Universe Fou-lu expy. This gets more hilarious when you realise that even Elyon's name is a shout-out to this; it's one of the many Hebrew names of God, translating to "The Most High". And Fou-lu was a literal God Emperor. What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic?
Nostalgia has Doctor Brown, who looks like Indiana Jones with a Badass Moustache. Melody also looks wicked similar to Lina Inverse, except she's got blue eyes and a different costume.
Much of Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 2's cast are expies of characters from the original storyline, to different degrees, in both the character design and personality (and the voice actors). The most blatant example is probably the odd-eyed artificial human onmyouji Abe no Yasutsugu who even inherits Yasuaki's catchphrase "no problem" to an extent. An interesting case is Yukari-hime and Misono, both of whom are expies of Fuji-hime from Haruka 1; although Misono being a boy, the similarity is limited to his appearance, as his personality is quite a bit different, while Yukari is a more direct expy of Fuji.
Mitsumete Knight, which is a Spiritual Successor of Tokimeki Memorial 1, got a few Expies, some more obvious than the others (for example, Hanna is a mix of Yuko Asahina and Nozomi Kiyokawa, Priscilla has some traits of Yumi, and Gene is a Megumi Mikihara who has taken numerous levels in badass). But the most obvious ones are :
- Lesley (of Ayako Katagiri, sharing a love of painting and a fear of water),
- Linda (of Mira Kagami, having the same hair color, the same haughty voice and attitude, a similar Noblewomans Laugh, and comparable Hidden Depths),
- and Johan (of Rei Ijuin, being both rivals of the protagonists, sharing the same arrogant and Screw The Rules I Have Money attitudes and a love for roses).
One of the cast of Dragon Age is an assassin sent by the king after The Hero and fails to kill them but joins the party if his life is spared in turn, is a Casanova with a Lovable Rogue sort of persona, and has a Spanish accent. Oh, and he even loves leather boots ~~and is short with pointed ears and a striped face~~. Hmm...
- Obviously, this was intended.
White-haired, red-eyed, powerful and well-endowed (Dark) Action Girl in a tight-fitting black getup who's (unreasonably) loyal to her master and a member of an ancient race, whose powers her master gains in some form. Eh, doc, we talkin' Reinforce I from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's (2005-2006) or Selvaria Bles from Valkyria Chronicles (2008)?
The Club has ~~Leonard Shelby~~Finn in it.
PangYa brings us Max, who is Sephiroth if he were to take up sports.
Drachma from Skies Of Arcadia is a ship captain with a missing limb who's obsessed with getting revenge on a whale.
With no specific Expy characters, Eternal Darkness is really an entire Expy work, transplanting the basic mythology and tone of H.P. Lovecraft into an original IP.
According to Cracked (assuming their information is accurate) Mario, Princess Peach and Donkey Kong were originally going to be Popeye, Olive Oyl and Bluto respectively. (Donkey Kong and Bluto do have a similar ape-like body and early Donkey King had the same "angry" mouth as Bluto).
Mostly unknown in the states, Princess Gradriel in Vanillaware's cult hit Princess Crown has a long list of expies and growing. The cute girl swinging a large sword while wearing a dress mixed with plate armor was too fun of a design not to spread. She's practically become the patron saint of royal ladies of war.
- La Pucelle's Eclair, including her Dark Form.
- Capcom's Gaia Masters has Princess Tiara.
- Saber of Fate Stay Night fame, though also mixed with Agrias.
- Though a departure in weapon and dress, Gwendolyn carries on many of Gradriel's traits (namely eating habits) since her game is a Spiritual Successor.
- Yggdra of Yggdra Union takes the classic silhouette to morally ambiguous territories of conquest.
- More of a cameo, a different princess of the same name and costume shows up in Etrian Odyssey II.
Since Gradriel herself and all expies but Saber are barely known, she avoids becoming an Overused Copycat Character.
Both Miko SHMUP Heroines Sayo Yuuki from Shikigami No Shiro and Reimu Hakurei from Touhou are said to be based on Sayo-chan/Pocky from Kiki Kaikai/Pocky and Rocky. The Bigger Sayo actually shares the same name and arcade publisher (Taito). Reimu in her PC-98 form is essentially Sayo-chan with Purple hair and a bow instead of an headband, and the creator of Touhou apparently was an Ascended Fanboy of Taito.
If planes can have Expies, the one in this Just Cause 2 video can be mistaken for a X-02 Wyvern from Ace Combat, apart from the two sets of fins and the visible ordnance.

Web Comics

It was explained by the author that N4-T3 (Nate) of Bob And George, the Yellow Demon that was converted into a good guy, was an Expy of a guy named Nate with similar glass that was going to be in the hand-drawn comic that was originally planned.
Olivia, Tate, and Zoey from Weesh are rather obviously modeled on Alex, Riley, and Tristan from the author's earlier Angel Moxie. (Zoey is a teenager and Tate is a boy, but other than that...)
Lindesfarne from Kevin And Kell fulfills a very similar role to that of Samantha from Safe Havens: a kind, witty and intelligent scientist. Both were created by Bill Holbrook.
Dave's Bro from Homestuck shares a good number of similarities to Kamina, being a Crazy Awesome swordsman with Cool Shades who looks after his little bro. Weirdly enough, Andrew Hussie never even heard of TTGL while or before creating Bro.
- If your definition of "looks after" is "uses his money from his creepy internet pornography business to buy a jumble of unbelievably shitty swords instead of food, then breaking every bone in his little brother's body with a puppet before Riding Into The Sunset on his rocket board," then yeah, they're practically the same.
Inverted by John Allison's comic Scary Go Round, which uses the same characters as his previous comic Bobbins but gives them different roles.
Even Dozerfleet Comics characters are prone to this. Candi Levens of the Ciem Webcomic Series is in many ways an expy of Vaneesa Abiyoti from Stationery Voyagers: Final Hope. Both are in-turn expies of Juanita "Olive Kitty" Bines, a character from a 1997 short-lived short story collection titled Mechanical Conflict. They may have different ethnicities and differing levels of mortality, but they are quite easily the same character, for obvious reasons.
- Final Hope is even worse: Laura Herrante is basically just a Caucasian version of Vaneesa, and ends up having the role Vaneesa would have fulfilled if not for having been offed by Astrabolo.

Web Animation

Broken Saints has two villainous blond lieutenants named Charles and Bravado. Between the names and the haircuts, there is something very, very familiar about them...
Lord Zet and Nekoneko of the flash series Super Freakin' Parody Rangers are deliberately obvious Expies of Zetto and Ruri from the creator's earlier work TTA.

Web Original

Suzumiya Haruhi no Yaku-Asobi is full of these. One particularly sprawling multi-RPer slider faction known as the Multiverse Enforcement Bureau employs what is practically an alternate SOS-dan, consisting of a long-haired half-American Trigger Happy Haruhi who's a stickler for keeping things orderly, Kyonko, the person Kimidori Emiri was 'based on' by the aliens (a Dojikko), the Student Council President from Seitenkan, a Cold Sniper Mikuru, and an MIB-ish Sasaki. No, really.
Dr. James Zanasiu, main character of the DarwinsSoldiers RPs is an expy of James Miardian, the scientist from the first RP that James's creator ever played: The Spreading Hazard.
- Dr. Bailey, who first appeared in the rebooted Furtopia RP, was an expy of Dr. Shelton from the Gang of Five RPs, after the latter showed how useful it was to have a non-action tech guy around.
A fair amount of characters from Survival Of The Fittest. Occasionally, you will see one of a character from a previous version or the original canon (for example, Melina Frost was clearly at least to some extent inspired by Mariavel Varella of v2, and possibly by extension, Mitsuko from Battle Royale). Other times, you will see ones of characters from other works, based on people the handler knows, or are imported from other roleplays the handler has participated in.

Western Animation

Disney's animated female leads in recent years (Belle, Ariel, Pocahontas, Jasmine) have a distressing sameness about them, which may point to their all being Expies of each other (Pointed out by Animaniacs in this song). All are rebellious (despite having a decent life), do not want to be with a man they are initially bethrothed to (technically Ariel does not want any mermen), all have animal sidekicks. Somewhat subverted with early heroines: Snow White is innocence personified, Cinderella was much more plucky, and Sleeping Beauty was much more passionate.
- Also, for some reason, being a mother to a Disney she-protagonist appears to be a ticket to premature Critical Existence Failure.
- Although Belle has some similarities to the other 90's Disney protagonists, I think it's fair to set her apart for at least one key reason- She wasn't a Princess, she was the daughter of a moderately poor inventor. The other girls were all Princesses who could functionally have anything they wanted because of their respective father's power; the Princesses all yearned to escape from a life of luxury and splendor where they could have anything they wanted. Belle's wish to escape is a little more understandable, being that she's quite literally stuck in a French village with nowhere to go.
- Somewhat more distressingly, Cinderella and Snow White appear to be married to the same man, Prince Charming, who may or may not be the same man as Prince Phillip in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. We suggest you don't think about it.
  - This fact is used directly in Fables comic, where Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty all are ex-wives of Prince Charming, and the musical Into the Woods, which has has Prince Charming lose interest in Cinderella after they get married and go after Sleeping Beauty.
  - Shortlived TV series The Charmings also played with it, having the Prince's ex "Cindy" show up and make Snow jealous.
- Similarly, Baloo from Disney's The Jungle Book and Little John from Disney's Robin Hood look quite similar, and are both voiced by Phil Harris.
  - There is, in fact, a reason for this. Disney was in the financial hole at the time Robin Hood was made and a number of scenes in the film (for example, the dancing in Sherwood Forest and ~~Kaa's~~ Sir Hiss's hypnotizing of Prince John) were actually trace-overs from cels in older films such as the Aristocats, Snow White and The Jungle Book. Fortunately Robin Hood did well and Disney was able to carry on.
  - -as indeed Maid Marian dancing was a rotoscope of Snow White.
  - And Tale Spin recycled Baloo and some other characters into a Roaring Twenties setting.
  - But it was still Baloo, Louie and Shere Khan. They weren't new characters based on Baloo, Louie and Shere Khan. House Of Mouse's "King Larry", on the other hand, was an Expy of Louie, created to avoid legal issues when the Louis Prima estate charged Disney of not paying royalties to Prima for Tale Spin and The Jungle Book. Baloo, Louie and Shere Khan may have been reframed in a different scenario and time period, but were still the same characters.
  - Aversion, Beauty and the Beast: the designs for Belle and the human version of the Beast were most decidedly not Expies of any other Disney characters.
Hank from King Of The Hill is an expy of Mr. Anderson from Beavis And Butthead.
- Similarly, Stuart Dooley is Butthead's expy.
The Transformers franchise is constantly rebooted, technically making Optimus, Megatron, Starscream, etc. expies of about eight or so identically-named characters. And then, there are other examples:
- Terrorsaur from Beast Wars was a Starscream expy, right down to the screechy voice. This may or may not have been an accident, as the writers started with little knowledge of the original and brushed up on the history as they went along. Interestingly, Waspinator was once possessed by the Starscream's ghost. They could well have just had Starscream possess Terrorsaur, but as Terrorsaur's voice actor also acted for Starscream, people probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Besides, it's more fun to abuse Waspinator.
- Beast Wars actually has several Starscream-expies: Terrorsaur is cartoon Starscream, with the obvious, transparent, why-doesn't-Megatron-just-kill-him backstabbery. Tarantulas is the smarter Starscream of the comics, biding his time for grander schemes. And the next Starscream, from Transformers Armada, resembles Beast Wars' Dinobot!
- Sixknight in Transformers Super God Masterforce is a clear expy of Sixshot from Transformers Headmasters - both are ninja robots with six transformations and Noble Demon tendencies. They are later revealed to be brothers.
One apparently short-lived cartoon that was somewhat of a Scooby Doo ripoff was slated to be a Wacky Races spinoff starring Muttley as its main character, but he was changed at the last second to be a trenchcoat-clad Expy named "Mumbly" who could only speak in mumbled sentences.
- Mumbly reappeared in Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics, now partnered with a Dick Dastardly Expy called the Dread Baron. (At the time, Heatter-Quigley still owned the Wacky Races characters; Hanna-Barbera later bought the characters outright.) anyway. Oddly enough, Mumbly was a pre-existing character that predated Wacky Races, with exactly the same design he had in Laff-a-Lympics, although he was a good guy (and Columbo pastiche) in his series. The similarity was likely just conveniently coincidental for Hanna-Barbera.
  - In Latin America, they just said "the hell with it" and called them Pierre Nodoyuna and Patán (the Latin American names of Dick Dastardly and Muttley).
  - An issue of the Laff-a-Lympics comic book revealed that the Dread Baron is Dick Dastardly's brother.
- The characters of most Hanna-Barbera Amateur Sleuth series are Expys of the Scooby Doo gang.
Ben's alternate forms in Ben 10 Alien Force seem to be Expys of his forms from the original series, albeit with different mixes of Combo Platter Powers: Swampfire is a mix of Heatblast and Wildvine, Chromastone is the new Diamondhead, Big Chill is Ghostfreak and Stinkfly with ice powers, and so on.
- Paradox seems to be an Expy of the The Doctor.
- Some people have compared Zombozo in Ben 10 to Pennywise the Dancing Clown. In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, he's more like The Joker.
- Will Harangue from Ultimate Alien is a blatant J Jonah Jameson Expy, with some features resembling news pundits like Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, and Bill O'Reily thrown in for realism.
- After being unable to make any sense of Kevin's sudden and inexplicable change from sociopathic Complete Monster to wisecracking Anti Hero, the team behind Alien Force and Ultimate Alien have taken his prior characterization and powers, made it grown-up and mature, and have named it "Aggregor", who is truly a foe to beware.
Little Audrey is both a Captain Ersatz and an Expy of Little Lulu, since she was created by the animators at Paramount-Famous, the same studio that animated Lulu. Audrey was created after Paramount lost the rights to Lulu from her creator, Margarie Buell.
Looney Tunes character Ralph Wolf (the one who keeps trying to steal sheep) is indistinguishable from Wile E. Coyote except for his red nose. (Both characters were created by Chuck Jones.)
- In one Looney Tunes comic book, Wile and Ralph meet, turning out to be long-lost brothers. They both realize that they both failed to get their respective targets (the Road Runner and the sheep, respectively), so they team up to catch the Road Runner. And fail.
  - Despite the recycled character design, there is quite a fundamental difference regarding how Wile E. and Ralph are each utilized in their respective shorts - Wile E. is a true blue fanatic, totally and utterly obsessed with catching the Roadrunner, while Ralph is very literally a Punch Clock Villain (indeed, outside of work, he and his professional nemesis, Sam Sheepdog, appear to be the best of friends).
- Likewise, Alexander Graham Wolf from Chuck Jones' Raggedy Ann and Andy special The Great Santa Claus Caper is an Expy of the "genius" version of Wile E. Coyote who appeared opposite Bugs Bunny.
In Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, Max's girlfriend Mona is a quite obvious Expy (in character, but not in design) of Roxanne from A Goofy Movie; she's even voiced by the same VA, Kellie Martin. The plot at hand is that he's bringing his girlfriend from college home for Christmas to meet his dad ...but Roxanne obviously met Goofy before, so they came up with a new girlfriend character. (And, to be realistic, how many of you were still with your high school crush/sweetheart in college?)
In the Duck Dodgers episode "Pig Planet", Porky tells a story to his nephews, Porko and Puerco, and his niece, Sow. The three piglets are obvious Expys of Yakko, Wakko and Dot from Animaniacs; even the voices are the same.
- And there's another nod to past continuity in that Porko physically resembles Porky's comic book nephew Cicero, with his sailor suit and cap.
Justice League Unlimited has Galatea, who has the look, costume, and general backstory (being a clone of Supergirl) of DC Comics' Power Girl, though the incarnation is much more villanous and lacks Power Girl's Most Common Super Power.
- Similarly, the Ultimen consisted entirely of Expies from the Super Friends cartoon, the most noticable probably being Zan and Jayna... That is, Downpour and Shifter
  - The entire episode was a homage to Super Friends; the Ultimen base on top of the skyscraper looking like the Hall of Justice, Long Shadow's cell ringtone being the old theme, even how they only used Superman, Batman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman as the hero team in the episode.
- Earlier than those two, the Justice Guild was a very thinly-veiled Expy of the Justice Society Of America; the villains of the episode were themselves Expies of The Wizard, Icicle, Sportsmaster, and The Fiddler. Their two-part story arc was an adaptation of the first JLA/JSA team-up story set in an Adam West-style World Of Ham. This was done mostly because DC wouldn't allow them to use the actual JSA as was planned, thinking that a story presenting the JSA in the goofy (and slightly racist) style that that episode did would shine badly on the recently relaunched JSA comic series. It worked out well for the producers, though, as they were able to use the characters legitimately in JLU later on.
- There's also Devil Ray, who is basically Black Manta with a name change. His rivalry with Aquaman is never mentioned (due in part to the rights for the character being held up by the WB's plan for Smallville style show focusing on him), instead being matched up against Wonder Woman for most of his appearances.
Mac, the protagonist of Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends, is ~~based on~~ an exact clone of a one-time Powerpuff Girls character, Mike (note the names). In that episode, Mike came in as a new student with an imaginary friend (take note) and trouble started brewing afterwards. The students blamed him for causing all this, but it was really his imaginary friend doing the mischief. Mac and Mike look exactly the same except Mike has an outline.
Mayor from The Powerpuff Girls is the expy of a science fair judge in "Mandarker", an episode of the show's Spiritual Successor, Dexter's Laboratory. It should be noted that Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Dexter's Lab, was also animation director for The Powerpuff Girls.
Mickey Mouse himself is one. He was created simply so Walt Disney could replace Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, a character he had just lost to his distributer because he refused to take a cut in his budget. Essentially, Oswald was Mickey with longer ears.
- The upcoming video game Epic Mickey is playing on this, now that Disney got Oswald's rights back almost a century later.
American Dad took the entire family archetype from Family Guy and transfered it near Washington D.C., as well as replaced the dog and baby with a goldfish and alien. Also, Stan may be an expy of Joe Swanson, which would have possibly been lampshaded in the Family Guy episode "Lois Kills Stewie".
- The visual similarities between Stan Smith and Joe Swanson in separate Seth MacFarlane shows, is likely because of Seth's simplistic drawing style and his penchant for characatured jawlines. Of course, even the hatedom don't like admitting to agreeing with John Kricfalusi on this one.
- Of course the debate still rages whether those are expies of The Simpsons, if only between their respective Fan Dumbs. The two shows, aside from the occasional Take That, maintain that they aren't.
- The Cleveland Show borrowed most of its characters from other Seth MacFarlane shows and then turned them Black (Rallo = Black Stewie, Cleveland Jr. = Black Chris, and Roberta = Black Hayley to name a few).
  - Cleveland Jr. was actually plumped up to make him a Chris expy.
  - And of course, while the basic character roles may be recycled, their actual personalities are wildly different. Most notably, Rallo is overprotective of his mother instead of insanely matricidal. Nor is he a stereotypical homosexual.
- Peter and Brian themselves are expies from two characters from this old What-A-Cartoon Show short.
At least three of the characters in Extreme Ghostbusters are expies of the original Ghostbusters; Eduardo Rivera = Peter Venkman, Garrett Miller = Ray Stantz (at one point, in frustration, Egon accidentally calls Garrett "Ray") and Roland Jackson = Winston Zeddemore. The process of elimination would sugest that Kylie Griffin = Egon Spengler, but Egon is actually IN that cartoon in the background, in the same way that the actual Looney Tunes themselves were basically just teachers in the background of tiny toons. Speaking of Tiny Toons;
- I don't know if it's fair to call Roland an expy of Winston. Roland was always the academically gifted, science-passionate, straight-laced guy who often was teased for this combination of traits. In the original Ghostbusters, Winston was the blue-collar guy who was * much less* interested in the geeky stuff than Egon or Ray. Aside from the fact that they're both black they don't seem very similar.
Tiny Toons is a combination of this trope and Spinoff Babies, as all the main characters are yonger Palette Swap versios of the original Looney Tunes, who are actually there, in the background, as teachers in Acme Loonaversity. Probably the Tiny Toon who's the furthest from her Loonytoon counterpart is Elmyra. (Escentially, she's more of an Evil Counterpart than an Expy.) Unlike Elmer, Elmyra LOVES animals, and is female. Ironically, unlike Elmer, animals find Elmyra genuinely frightening. Still, relatively speaking Tiny Toons was downright respectable compared to some other shows
- Babs is the only Tiny Toon that never really had a Looney Tunes counterpart. However, Lola was later added to the Looneytunes lineup, and... never mind.
Several members of the Danny Phantom cast share huge similarities with characters from the Spider Man mythos, the most obvious being Dash Baxter who serves as an expy for Flash Thompson, they're both Jerk Jocks who bully their protagonist while at the same time being the biggest fan of Superhero (who is also the protagonist.)
- Danny Phantom is essentially an expy for Peter Parker, both are outcasts who were bullied in school and obtained their powers through a scientific accident.
- Vlad Masters as well serves as an expy for Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin. Both being rich evil masterminds who have an unhealthy obsession with the Danny and Peter respectively. They both know their secret identies and initially hoped to take them under their wings. Vlad is also an expy of Slade from the Teen Titans.
  - An even better example is the fact that Vlad is pretty much an expy for Dracula. Both share the same first name (IE: Vlad Dracula III and Vlad Masters). Both live in huge (mostly) empty castles. Both have supernatural powers (Dracula being a vampire and Vlad being half-ghost). Both are in love with a woman whose name starts with the letter "M" (Vlad loves Maddie Fenton and Dracula loves Mina Harker). Both were defeated by ordinary human beings (Dracula was defeated by Abraham Van Helsing and Vlad was (on at least one occasion) defeated by Jack Fenton). And, both use a backwards-spelling alias of their names (Vlad used "Dalv" on one occasion and Dracula, of course, has Alucard). Heck, Vlad even was supposed to originally be a vampire, but, the executives at Nickelodeon thought the whole "vampire" thing would be too occult and had him be a half-ghost instead.
Jet from Avatar The Last Airbender bears a certain resemblence to Mugen, who is an expy of Spike in the first place. Actually, Jet practically IS Mugen, from character design to personality (but with different circumstances). The key difference is that while Spike and Mugen are leading main characters, Jet is only a secondary character, and is therefore less immortal.
Cool Mc Cool was created by Bob Kane, so it's fitting that Cool's Rogues Gallery bears an odd resemblance to another certain set of villains. Cool's 'Jack in the Box' bears a certain resemblance to The Joker, 'The Owl' is quite like the Penguin, the Owl's sidekick 'The Pussycat' resembles Catwoman and 'Dr Madcap' is similar to the old school Mad Hatter.
Obviously, everyone from Drawn Together is an Expy from their respective animation (or other) genre:
- Princess Clara is, personality-wise, a generic Disney Princess but in appearance is an expy of Ariel.
- Captain Hero is Superman. He's a super-powered alien from a planet that blew up, sending him to Earth. Unlike Superman, he feels no sort of responsibility to do the right thing and is an aggressive alcoholic.
- Toots is an (older and washed up) expy of Betty Boop.
- Xandir's most notable similarity is Link, but only vaguely. It's a bit of a stretch to call him an expy when the only similarity is blonde hair, pointed ears, and a sword. He's really meant more to symbolize effeminate video game heroes in general.
- Wooldoor is an expy of Spongebob Squarepants, even having a similar voice.
- Ling-Ling is a direct expy of Pikachu, right down to having been trained by a boy who looks a lot like Ash Ketchum. We even see Ling-Ling evolve at one point, though the process seems to be very different here.
- Foxxy Love is a direct (though R-rated) expy of Valerie Smith from Josie and the Pussycats.
- Maia Sterling (the other daughter of Max and Mirya) in Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, appears to be an expy for Aurora Sterling (the other daughter of Max and Mirya) from the Jack Mc Kinney Robotech novels. So far, Maia hasn't shown any psychic powers.
Suzie Chan is essentially a Chinese version of Daphne from Scooby Doo in terms of appearance and temperament. The only difference is that Suzie, being somewhat savvier, avoids falling into the role of the Distressed Damsel.

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