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alt title(s): Legal Character Copy; Expies The one in back, The way he acts, Is he reminding you of anyone you know? Isn't he so Like certain people I could name?
I found him more believable when he was named Jerid Mesa. But I like him better when he was named Patrick.
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. 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 anime, 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 a character strongly resembles a real person, rather than a fictional character, that's No Celebrities Were Harmed. When the character appears in the same show as the previous character, he's often a Jonas Quinn.
The key difference between this and Captain Ersatz is that an Expy is based on a character by the same creator, while Captain Ersatz is based on a character by a different creator. Please keep this distinction in mind before adding an example here. Also note that unless the author is also personally related to the person in question, a fictional counterpart to a real-life person would not be an Expy. 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, Names The Same, Roman A Clef. Not to be confused with XP.
Please read the article before posting.
Examples:
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- 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, but its notable many of the most prominent characters are toned-down analogues to Love Hina characters: Nodoka is a early Shinobu, Ku Fei is a Chinese version of Su, Chizuru Naba is a less foolish Mutsumi, Kaede is a squinty, easy-going but wholesome Kitsune, etc. Setsuna's similarities to Motoko are explained by them being using the same fighting style.
- Oddly enough, Naru seems to have been split into a few characters: Anya is the Embarrased Naru, Chisame is the Nerd Naru, and Asuna is the Protective Naru.
- One should also note that Asakura's personality is quite similar to Kitsune's.
- A rather obscure one: Fate Averruncus is obviously based on Program Number 0 from Akamatsu's first manga, A.I. Love You
- Kotaro is essentially a shota Inuyasha.
- 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.
- Word of God says that the Inu Yasha and Kagome romance was explicitly treated as being the Ranma and Akane romance done the way they should have been done. Inu Yasha in human form even looks just like Ranma with really long hair!
- 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.
- 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.
- Many characters in Yu-Gi-Oh have 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, using the same strategy as Dartz. Kaiba has two in Kaiser Ryo and Manjyome (mainly Kaiser Ryo, as Manjyome becomes increasingly goofier over the course of the series.) Also, Sho seems to be based on little Yugi.
- One also mustn't forget that both Fubuki and Asuka look like Kaiba and Jyonouchi's love-children.
- Also, the Sacred Beasts are Expy's of the God Cards.
- Jack Atlas in 5D's is arguably an Expy of Kaiba. The dub plays this aspect up.
- His asistant Mikage also seems to be an Expy of Scheris from [[Scryed]] in both appearance and her relationship with Jack.
- Yusei Fudo is obviously an Expy of Yami Yugi. Even their hair is similar, though Yusei's is relatively less insane. Yusei also talks quite a bit about friendship.
- 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. No, really, this troper thought their first appearances to the other members of their respective teams were almost similar.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 of the "Lone Wolf With Sibling Complex (Sometimes Also A Genius)" variety.
- 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 one of the random background characters of season 2.
- The teacher in Tamers looks like Hikari (who became a teacher) and even shares the same voice actress in the dub.
- 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.
- 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.
- I've read of this as being like Miyazaki hiring the same fictional "actors" for his films, like an ensemble cast.
- 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. Speaking of said early design, Nero's sword, the Red Queen from Devil May Cry 4, looks and acts the same as the Gamma's original sword, right down to vibrating to add power and speed to strikes.
- 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), 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.
- 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.
- And then subverted in chapter 223, when Syaoran and Sakura from Tsubasa are revealed to actually BE Syaoran and Sakura from CCS.
- 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 RC, 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.
- 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".
- 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 Darlian, also a royal pacifist love interest for The Hero.
- Speaking of Relena, she seems to be based on Sayla Mass: former princess, different alias, and an older brother who became a soldier to avenge his parents' deaths.
- 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.
- 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.
- Speaking of Yuki as a Rei expy, Suzumiya Haruhi's Itsuki Koizumi may be an expy of Kaworu Nagisa, in terms of hairstyle and coming close to the male lead character. Though on Itsuki's side, we eventually find out the one he really likes is Haruhi.
- 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.
- 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 fraternal twin sisters—one a Tsundere with long hair, the other shy and gentle with short. 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.
- Hikari and Akari of This Ugly Yet Beautiful World 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.
- 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.
- Several Mai-Otome characters are Expies of Mai-HiME characters. A few of the more obvious ones are Arika for Mai (The Hero, The Messiah) and Mikoto (Genki Girl); Nina for Natsuki (Blue-Haired Lancer), and Irina for Yukino (Meganekko). Tomoe is Shizuru with a diaper fetish. Shizuru even says that Tomoe reminds her of herself (minus the fetish).
- One Piece recently saw the protagonist of one of its creator's earlier stories appear as a zombie swordsman.
- There's also the character of Monkey D. Garp who is Luffy's Grandfather. Originally, Garp was a character who appeared in one version of the pilot Romance Dawn. In this version, he was the one who gave Luffy the Gomu Gomu Fruit and he also was the one who inspired Luffy to become a pirate. Ironically, his current self frowns upon Luffy's pirate lifestyle.
- In addition, 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.
- Shotaro Ishinomori introduced a character by the name of Roam in the Legend Of Zelda manga he drew. This character is such an obvious expy for Ishinomori's Cyborg 009 character 002/Jet Link that this troper initially thought they were supposed to be the exact same character.
- Jet got yet another Expy in GaoGaiGar's Pizza/Soldato J.
- 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 (whose name escapes me right now), a tinkerbell-esque fairy who bears an uncanny resemblance to one from a previous Tomino series, Aura Battler Dunbine.
- 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.
- 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).
- An ironic expy: Dawn's Mamoswine, of Ash's Charizard. Both are final stages of a Pokémon that evolves twice, both were caught in their first forms, both started to disobey their trainers after evolving to their intermediate form, and both went from their base forms to their final forms ridiculously quickly (Ash's Charmeleon evolved to Charizard just three episodes after evolving from Charmander; Dawn's Piloswine broke that record by evolving to Mamoswine just two episodes after evolving from Swinub). This is ironic because Charizard is a Fire-and-Flying type, and Mamoswine is an Ice-and-Ground type. However, while Charizard didn't start obeying Ash until 61 episodes after it first started disobeying him, Mamoswine comes around in just 13. The reason for changing their tune was the same, though.
- 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.
- Higurashino Naku Koroni: 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, a fact which 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 disguises as him, without his usual Latex Perfection masks. 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.
- Masataka Takayanagi from Tenjho Tenghe 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.
- 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'
- After time-skip, Rossiu from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann looks remarkably like Fei Fong Wong from Xenogears, which may be either a Shout Out or a Take That, depending upon your opinion of Xenogears.
- Takane from Sora Wo Kakeru Shoujo is a carbon copy of Chikane from Kannazuki No Miko—except she is probably not lesbian, at least as far as we know.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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 cricket 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.
- 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
- 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.
- The on exception for Adam Sandler is the Wedding Singer, where he plays someone likable.
- 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.
- Averted with John Belushi and Dan Akyroyd though.
- The writers for Will Ferrell even admitted that their scripts take someone known as "that guy," who always has the same personality, flaws, and so on, only with a different name and profession.
- Will Ferrell did play a very different character than he normally does in Stranger Than Fiction, though. Instead of the raucous frat-boy persona he normally portrays, his character in that film was a quiet, strait-laced, nebbishy type, and was given several intensely dramatic scenes that this troper was surprised and pleased to see he pulled off very well.
- And Mugatu from Zoolander was a bit off-model for him too.
- If only because so much more flamboyant. "Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
- 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 Wuertz and Ramirez, who essentially Expy for Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya, with the exception of, again, being corrupt.
- John Cusack's Hitman With A Heart in {{War Inc.}} is an expy of his character in the earlier film Gross 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 character 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.
- Similarly, Padme Amedala is an Expy of Princess/Mom Leia Organa
- 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 Exy 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 Gervious is a bit closer to Vader; Darth Vader has trouble breathing, Grevious has a cough, and they're both cyborgs who can use The Force.
- Since when could Grievous use the Force? Before or after he had 93% of his body eradicated and the remaining squishy bits put into a bag? He was just a regular badass. With 2 to 4 arms.
- 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).
- In Gremlins 2 The New Batch, there is a Mogwai who looks an 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 undenyably an expy of Stripe.)
- Terminator Salvation Marcus, in several ways, is an Expy of Arnold/the T800, especialy in Terminator 2, and to a lesser extent, Kyle Reece in the first Terminator movie. Marcus is basically a Prototype for the T800, as he actually has a metal endo skelton and his outsides are living tissue. Unlike the T800, 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, amuseingly, when the Humans chan 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.
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 blatent example of this trope in the form of bumbling would-be wizard Zifnab.
- Tom and Carl, the Advisors in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, are expies of the two main characters from her unsuccessful adult fantasy series, The Door to....
- "The Door Into...". Anyway, that's an interesting thesis. Would you care to defend it? Name at least ten ways that Tom and Carl are like Herewiss and Freelorn. :)
- 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".
- 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.
- Speaking of Robert Jordan, some of his Conan novels feature a Red Sonja expy named Karela The Red Hawk. The only differences between the two being that Karela was Chaotic Evil to Sonja's Chaotic Good and that Karela had no restrictions on sleeping with Conan when she wasn't trying to kill him.
- So technically,Karela is more of an Evil Counterpart to Red Sonja than an Expy.
- Not really, since Karela was made to be a Conan love-interest/villain - not a Red Sonja enemy. As I understand it, an Evil Counterpart has to be specifically set up as an arch-enemy whereas an Expy can just be any take-off of an established character.
- I love the way people can mention Conan but totally overlook the works by the ORIGINAL AUTHOR. Conan himself was largely an Expy of other Robert E. Howard characters such as King Kull and Bran Mak Morn.
- In any Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel written by Lance Parkin, there'll be a character "played by" Ian Richardson. In ''The Dying Days" the character in question is Lord Greyhaven, who's a full-blown Expy of Richardson's most famous role: Francis Urquhart.
- In the 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.
- 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 Lilly 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.
- 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 it is even listed on his page his three most common character types.
Live Action TV
- 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.
- Half 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.
- And again.
- And again.
- And again.
- This Troper remembers four different cast sets.
- 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.
- On a related note, the Bajorans seem to be expies of multiple countries combined. Names, for example, are ordered as if Japanese (surname first), and they were enslaved, like various cultures. So, if you want to make an expy of multiple cultures, just make him/her Bajoran.
- 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")
- Chloe Sullivan on Smallville originally started as an Expy for Lois Lane (an actual Lois was introduced later).
- Number Six on The Prisoner is arguably an Expy of John Drake from Danger Man. (One could make the case that Mc Goohan's spy characters in the movie Ice Station Zebra and a 1975 episode of Columbo are also the same guy.)
Tabletop Games
- The Ravenloft game setting, particularly in its original Black Box edition, might just as well have been called the Land of Expys as the Land of Mists. Name a classic horror movie character — Dracula, Van Helsing, Frankenstein, Frankenstein's Monster, Jekyll/Hyde, the Mummy — and Ravenloft's got a clone of them hanging around somewhere.
- 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 & 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 & Sullivan, some believe that Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore may be an older, more jaded version of Dick Dauntless in Ruddigore.
Web Comics
- Overlapping with Homage, Lt. Charles and Lt. Bravado from Broken Saints are basically evil versions of Charlie and Guile.
Video Games
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 am 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.
- 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.
- Sora, in terms of design, is also the expy of Sion Barzahd from one of Tetsuya Nomura's earlier games, The Bouncer.
- For a less subtle example from the same series, Axel from KH 2 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 AND English voice actors, or that Final Fantasy VII canonically crosses over into Kingdom Hearts, or that the members of the Organization (including Axel) are doubles of other characters, and we've never met Axel's...
- Kingdom Hearts' character designer, Tetsuya Nomura 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." He also admitted Axel's double was named after "Ale," or Reno's favorite drink.
- But if Axel were really Reno's Nobody, he'd probably be called "Xoren" or something like that instead.
- Another example worth mentioning is 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.
- Vexen is almost like the terrifying offspring of Hojo and Kefka.
- Larxene also somewhat resembles Elena of the Turks in appearance and, except for the R, can get Elena out of a real name variant. 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.
- And there's Roxas Mk. II, Ven.
- Also, Terra resembles Zack Fair from Final Fantasy VII quite a bit.
- Reiji Arisu and Xiaomu, the original characters from Namco x Capcom, are pretty close Expies of Kyosuke Nanbu and Excellen Browning from Super Robot Wars Compact 2/Impact and the Original Generation series. Not surprisingly, both games had the same director.
- Monolith Soft, the makers of Namco x Capcom, then made Endless Frontier: Super Robot Wars OG Saga, which features gender-flipped Expies of Kyosuke and Excellen, a regular Expy of Lamia (crossed with Xenosaga's KOS-MOS), plus guest-stars Reiji, Xiaomu, and KOS-MOS herself (also including T-elos). The aforementioned director that made Reiji and Xiaomu is involved in this too, so it is no wonder.
- Strictly, they're not gender-flipped, they're name-flipped. Kaguya Nanbu is the Expy of Excellen Browning, and Harken Browning takes after Kyousuke Nanbu. Endless Frontier also stars Aschen Brodel, who shouldn't at all remind you of Lamia Loveless. Justified in that she's W07, and is basically the combat version of Lamia Loveless. Oh, and the Endless Frontier crowd have Kyousuke's, Excellen's, and Lamia's Leitmotifs. Just saying.
- I'd debate that. Kaguya has Excellen's ... questionable intelligence, but a fighting style closer to Kyosuke and his more down-to-Earth personality. Haken has Excellen's wise-cracking, flirtatious personality, gun-toting combat style, and ties to the W-series.
- Speaking of Xenosaga, that series is just crawling 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 class piloting 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 and Quattro).
- Curiously, Elzam's Ratsel guise is far more of an expy of the Quattro Bajeena 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 Aznable. And yet, once the shades come on, Ratsel and Quattro might as well each be a Paper Thin Disguise for the other.
- Super Robot Wars OG really run on lots of Expies. Super Robot Wars Z introduces us Asakim Dowin a darker Expy of Masaki Andoh, justified that he was one of the early original character designs in the beginning of SRW. Their expy qualities come mainly from their voice (Hikaru Midorikawa), drive on revenge and the fact that Shurouga (Asakim's mecha) is pretty much a black/anti Cybuster (similar attacks, more sadism). That, and while Masaki is just a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold, Asakim is a totally sadistic bastard (not nearing a Psycho For Hire or an Ax Crazy fella... but still...)
- 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) argueably haveing 2 (Jeigan in Mystery of the Emblem/The Binding Blade with Jeigan/Alan in Mystery of the Emblem and Marcus/Zelot in The Binding Blade, Nabarl with Rutger/Fir in The Binding Blade 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 Binding Blade were similar, while Oguma from Mystery of the Emblem and Deick from Binding Blade Binding Blade were the same. Kain and Abel in Mystery of the Emblem became Alan and Lance from Binding Blade — they're identical. That's just some between FE 3 and FE 6. Really, they all stem From the first/third game.
- 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.
- 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 assassin Cammy.
- 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.
- Wrestler dude Alex is based off Proud Warrior Race Guy Thunder Hawk (and against Hugo, a Captain Ersatz of Hulk Hogan as well). His design is also based on Biff Slamkovich (aka Aleksey Zalazoff) from Saturday Night Slam Masters.
- German Gigantic Wrestler Hugo is, quite obviously, based off of Russian Gigantic Wrestler Zangief, though he also has an origin as an enemy character in Final Fight and is based off the Original Gigantic Wrestling Master, Andre the Giant.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Megaman 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 Megaman ZX Advent. Both his appearance and personality are strikingly similar to that of Axl in the Megaman X series. He's actually the biometal for Albert, a completely different character.
- Concrete Man bears a striking resemblence to Guts Man.
- 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). Not to mention that they have a lieutenant that they drafted from their former race/allegiance, but said lieutenant proved to be too maverick and left their services; Duran and Sylvanas; and goes on to discover/create a new faction (the Xel'Naga (Zerg/Protoss hybrid) and the Forsaken)
- This troper thought Sylvanas to have more in common with Kerrigan than Duran.
- When Type-Moon made their first game Tsukihime writer Kinoko Nasu drew heavily on characters he'd created for his novel series Kara No Kyoukai. Ryogi Shiki got body-swapped into the body of Kokuto Mikiya and an adjustment to her split personalities to become Tohno Shiki. Mikiya's sister Azaka was turned into a proper ojou and became Akiha. Aozaki Touko doesn't exactly have an expy, but her only-occasionally-referenced younger sister Aoko was written in just for the heck of it and there are similarities there too.
- Rakkyo characters also inspired some of the cast of their follow-up work Fate/Stay Night with a clear physical similarity between Enjou Tomoe and Fate protagonist Emiya Shirou. Matou Sakura also bears a considerable resemblance to Asagami Fujino and the two characters also have some similarities in temperament and power.
- Parts of the design of antagonist Araya Souren can clearly be seen in the designs of both Nrvnqsr Chaos in Tsukihime (his facial structure) and Kotomine Kirei in Fate (his hair and clothes, swapping the prayer beads for a crucifix).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Arakune: Take Zato-1, replace his Shadow Powers at the cost of Eyesight with Incomprehensible Knowledge at the total loss of Sanity.
- Bang Shishigami: Ryoma Nagare as a ninja.
- Litchi Faye Ling: Jam Kuradoberi's nature + I-No's dressing style + Bridget's playing style + Millia Rage's story connections
- 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 he wears a hat and that the right side of his face isn't covered in bangs. Naoto even twirls the gun he 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.
- 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.
- Is it going too far to say that the Reapers from The World Ends With You are expys of the Organization XIII members seen in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories? Yashiro's a pink-haired Larxene, Kariya's a orange-haired Axel with a taste for lollipops, Higashizawa's a Lexaeus with dreads who loves cooking, Minamimoto's a cap-wearing, math-obsessed Zexion, Konishi's a female Vexen with glasses, and Kitaniji's a black-haired Marluxia with sunglasses.
- Not to mention that Neku and Shiki have very similar designs to Sora and Kairi.
- 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.
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...)
Western Animation
- Disney's animated female leads in recent years have a distressing sameness about them, which may point to their all being Expies of each other (Pointed out by Animaniacs in this song). 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.
- This troper was pleasantly surprised to see that, upon watching Beauty and the Beast again as an adult, the designs for Belle and the human version of the Beast were most decidedly not Expies of any other Disney characters.
- Check out this video on the matter.
- 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 does this quite a bit within itself. For broad examples, there are G1 homages in
virtually every show (and if the Big Bad or the Optimus isn't already a homage, they'll be repainted in G1 homage colours). For an equally broad example, virtually every Optimus is the same (although there are some variations such as age, whether they're hyper-competent or simply super-competent, etc). More specific 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.
- In Transformers Animated, some of Starscream's clones are expies of the other "Seekers" (at least in design). Their toys even name all of them but Liar Starscream and Female Starscream (who don't have toys) after the characters they're modeled after, so Sycophant, Egomaniac, and Coward Starscream become Sunstorm, Thundercracker, and Skywarp. In G1, although there were many of these 'Seekers' (as in, toys that shared Starscream's toy mold but had different colours), they were not Expies - a red-and-blue backstabber and a purple backstabber is boring; a red-and-blue backstabber and a purple prankster is more interesting.
- In terms of personality, each of Starscream's clones is a partial expy of Starscream himself; each one is explicitly stated to represent part of Starscream's personality. Thus why they have nicknames like "Liar", "Sycophant", "Egotist", etc.
- 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 "Mumbley" who could only speak in mumbled sentences. Or So I Heard, anyway.
- Mumbley 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.)
- 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.
- Little Audrey is both a Captain Ersatz and an Expy of Little Lulu, since she was created by the same animators at the same studio that animated Lulu.
- 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.)
- When was I was a little kid, I actually read a Looney Tunes comic book where 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.
- 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 Expis from the Super Friends cartoon, the most noticable probably being Zan and Jayna... That is, Downpour and Shifter
- 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.
Professional Wrestling
- The Seven Year Rule means that many wrestlers today are essentially Expies of wrestlers of the past. In one particular case in the WWE, Montel Vontavious Porter somehow managed to develop into a Ric Flair expy while Ric Flair was still around!
- Triple H managed that one four years before Porter. He even managed to be Expy Ric Flair while in the same faction as Flair in Evolution. Evolution itself was an Expy of the Four Horsemen, with HHH in the Flair "jerkoff champ" role, Flair taking on the J.J. Dillon manager role, Batista in the Arn Anderson "enforcer" role, and Randy Orton in the Tully Blanchard "talented rookie" role. This is probably a mix of Follow The Leader and Invoked Trope, as there'd be no way to avoid people comparing Evolution to the Horsemen, with the faction gimmick and Ric Flair's involvement.
- Triple H even lampshaded it at one point, saying that everything Flair once was, Trips himself now was.
- "Nature Boy" Ric Flair was himself an expy of "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers, to a greater extent than either of the above.
- TNA wrestler D.J. Lethal's current gimmick, Black Machismo, is so named because, aside from being black, his appearance and mannerisms are virtually identical to those of the famous WWF wrestler Randy "Macho Man" Savage.
- Then there's Stone Cold Shark Boy, though thats more of a parody
- Hulk Hogan is an expy of "Superstar" Billy Graham.
- Chris Benoit was an expy of Dynamite Kid.
- WWF's Kwang was an expy of the Great Muta.
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