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redirected from Main.RecycledINSPACE
alt title(s): Recycled INSPACE; INSPACE
I'm afraid I've got some bad news, boys—you're in space.
Strong Sad: "But why are they in space? There's no reason for them to be in space!"
Strong Bad: "On the contrary, my dear Fatson; there's every reason for them to be in space!"
Old cartoons are often recycled from other shows, with the setting changed with just enough of a gimmick to make it look different. The characters will have the same character types, sometimes even the same voice actors. Sometimes these will be direct spinoffs, with the same characters with one major time or setting change. Later varieties included " AS KIDS!"
The majority of these are seen as nonsensical updates according to whatever else was popular at the time. Putting the series into space, though, is the big one.
See also: Animated Adaptation, Gender Flip, Recycled The Series, Setting Update, X Meets Y and This Is Your Premise On Drugs.
Examples:
Western Animation
- Silverhawks was Thundercats IN SPACE! (Compare Mumm-ra's and Mon-starr's Transformation Sequences.) It even used most of the same voice actors. Rather odd in that Thundercats is in space in the first place...
- On a related note, the Tigersharks (part of a short-lived programming block called the Comic Strip) were Silverhawks... UNDER WATER! Who lives like the Thundercats under the sea? The... Ti... Ger... Sharks!
- The Flintstones was The Honeymooners AS CARTOON CAVEMEN!
- The Jetsons was Blondie And Dagwood IN THE FUTURE!
- No, no, no The Jetsons was Flinstones IN THE FUTURE! There's also Stone Trek, which is Star Trek, AS CARTOON CAVEMEN!
- Roman Holidays was Make Room For Daddy IN ANCIENT ROME!
- There were Animated Adaptations of both The Partridge Family and Happy Days set IN THE FUTURE! (the former of which was originally The Jetsons a few years farther into the future).
- Inspector Gadget was Get Smart AS A CARTOON CYBORG! (Maxwell Smart and Inspector Gadget were both played by Don Adams.)
- And it was followed by Gadget Boy & Heather, which was Inspector Gadget AS A SIX-YEAR-OLD! With Penny AS AN ADULT! And Brain AS A ROBOT! And Chief Quimby AS AN ITALIAN!
- There was an IN SPACE! Animated Adaptation of Gilligans Island, titled Gilligan's Planet.
- The original animated version of The Addams Family was ON THE ROAD IN A HOUSE-SHAPED CAR!. The 90's version was essentially just an Animated Adaptation of the movies, though.
- Loonatics Unleashed is Looney Tunes IN THE FUTURE AS ANIMESQUE TALKING ANIMAL SUPERHEROES! It didn't go over too well.
- The Flintstones, Looney Tunes, and Scooby Doo have all had AS KIDS! spinoffs. Even if in the original, there's a scene where they met for the first time, they knew each other as kids and have forgotten.
- This troper is amused to see that the other tropers have apparently managed to block out Yo, Yogi! featuring Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, etc. [-AS KIDS!-] If only he could, too...
- And how can we forget Muppet Babies? Except with powerful electroshock therapy?
- On the subject of Scooby Doo, we have:
- Jabberjaw - Scooby UNDERWATER, WITH A SHARK!
- Speed Buggy - WITH A TALKING CAR!
- Clue Club - WITH TWO DOGS!
- Funky Phantom - WITH A GHOST FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THAT'S A SNAGGLEPUSS EXPY!
- The Schmoo Show - WITH A SCHMOO!
- Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels - WITH AN UNFROZEN CAVEMAN SUPERHERO!
- Fangface - WITH A WEREWOLF!
- Josie And The Pussycats - WITH A CAT AND A GIRL GROUP IN CAT SUITS!
- Goober and the Ghost Chasers - ... THE DOG TURNS INVISIBLE?
- The Aesop: Hanna-Barbera knows how to run an idea INTO THE GROUND!
- Most (if not all) Disney animated movies are adaptations of some kind of fairy tale, myth, or story, many AS TALKING ANIMALS OR FUNNY ANIMALS!. The most egregious example was probably Oliver And Company, which was unabashedly Oliver Twist...WITH PETS!...IN MODERN-DAY NEW YORK CITY!. (Marketing even went so far as to call it "Oliver, WITH A TWIST.")
- The Lion King was essentially Hamlet IN AFRICA! (minus the existentialism and suicide and stuff), and is also said to borrow heavily from (or downright plagiarize, depending on who you ask) the anime The Jungle Emperor, aka Kimba, the White Lion. Whether this is true may not matter, as Kimba wasn't really that good. And lions don't live in the jungle.
- Or if you want to go even further back, it's Horus and Set, AS LIONS, for the control of Egypt - er, the Pridelands.
- Their animated film Treasure Planet is, of course, Treasure Island IN SPACE!...WITH FURRIES!
- And Atlantis The Lost Empire is Stargate IN ATLANTIS!
- The thing is that most of these Disney movies were good and successful in their own right, adding their own flavor to the story. I mean, Hamlet and The Lion King are similar but both are amazing in their own right and they also differ in certain moments. (The sequel on the other hand is a horrible rip of Romeo and Juliet and is best left alone...) With Treasure Planet, I knew it was a re-telling of Treasure Island, not just a rip off and found it to be rather well done, transporting the characters and plots into space.
- Sherlock Holmes In The Twenty Second Century is Sherlock Holmes... IN THE TWENTY-SECOND CENTURY! (No shit, Sherlock.)
- Ninja Turtles Fast Forward is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IN THE FUTURE!
- The French/Japanese series Ulysses 31 was basically Homer's Odyssey set IN THE 31ST CENTURY IN SPACE!
- Fonz And The Happy Days Gang was Happy Days WITH TIME TRAVEL!
- Aversion. The Futurama writing staff have claimed that a large part of the reason behind the Executive Meddling that the show suffered was that, much to the network's annoyance, the show was not The Simpsons IN SPACE!
- The 1965 Belgian animated film Pinocchio dans le Space (Pinocchio in Outer Space in English-speaking countries) is self-explanatory.
- ExoSquad is essentially World War II IN SPACE!
- And THE FUTURE! With awesome EXOSKELETONS!
- "Yosemite Sam of Outer Space!"
- The Snorks were basically The Smurfs UNDERWATER, AS MIDDLE-CLASS EAGLELANDERS.
- Recess is essentially Hogan's Heroes on a 90s elementary school playground. One such episode of Recess does a very good adaptation of the Hogan's Heroes pilot and another features a scene where expys of the characters are in a Hogan's Heroes style WWII POW camp complete with the Colonel Klink expy wearing a monocle.
- Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries is, as you can probably guess, Sylvester and Tweety (oh, and Granny) AS AMATEUR SLEUTHS!
- Three Words: Rocket Robin Hood
- Space Ghost Coast To Coast was Space Ghost AS A TALK SHOW! Likewise, Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law was Birdman IN A COURT ROOM!
- Sabrina And The Groovie Goolies was The Archie Show UNDEAD!
- Parodied in Homestar Runner with Limozeen: But they're in space! which, as you can guess, was about a Fake Band adventuring around space in their tour bus/space ship. It was cancelled during the airing of its pilot episode.
- The Oddball Couple was The Odd Couple AS CARTOON ANIMALS!
- American Dragon Jake Long, Danny Phantom and Ben10 were essentially all copies of each other, just WITH DRAGONS! or WITH GHOSTS! or WITH ALIENS!. While this troper originally believed Ben10 to be the worst of the three, it actually was the most successful, with American Dragon Jake Long canceled after two seasons and Danny Phantom screwed over by Nick. Ben10: Alien Force isn't even half bad.
- Even Pixar's done this (and pulled it off).
Video Games
- Super Mario Galaxy is Super Mario 64 IN SPACE! Although it worked out pretty well.
- Dino Crisis was Resident Evil WITH DINOSAURS!
- Dead Space either is Resident Evil + John Carpenter's The Thing IN SPACE! or Bio Shock IN SPACE!.
- Bioshock is System Shock WITH STEAMPUNK!
- Rather ironically, Bioshock takes something that was originally set IN SPACE, per the trope name, and instead puts it UNDERWATER! Same principle, however.
- Bioshock is, as the name would imply, Biopunk, not Steampunk.
- By necessity, the Ratchet & Clank series is Spyro IN SPACE WITH BFGS, MORE COMBAT-INTENSIVE GAMEPLAY, AND A MEAN SPIRITED SENSE OF HUMOR! So maybe not so much.
- Heretic and Hexen were Doom WITH SWORDS AND SORCERY! (the game engine was even the same)
- Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri is Civilization II IN SPACE! Fortunately, the game is so close to the Hard end of the Mohs Scale Of Sci Fi Hardness, it might as well be forgiven for that.
- It also makes more sense than many of the other examples on this page, since Civilization (and its sequels) feature launching a manned spaceship to Alpha Centauri as one way to win the game, as this would represent one of mankind's ultimate achievements.
- Sid Meiers Colonization is Civilization II IN THE COLONIAL TIME PERIOD ONLY!!
- Age Of Empires : Civilization + Warcraft IN A REAL, SPECIFIC TIME PERIOD !!!
- Aversion: Blizzard went to great lengths to make Starcraft not play like Warcraft IN SPACE! Brood War gives this a nice Lampshade Hanging.
- However, many elements introduced in Starcraft were reused in Warcraft 3, along with further refinements. Guess that makes WC 3 an inversion. As for the announced Starcraft II...time will tell, although Blizzard has already stated that the RPG elements used in WC 3 will not appear in SC 2.
- Speaking of Warcraft, the first expansion to World Of Warcraft feels a lot like World Of Warcraft In Space. The fact there are spaceships and the expansion takes place on another world with better technology than the original world doesn't help it's case any.
- Sez you. None of it struck this troper as really crossing the line much. (if at all)
- I take it you never visited the Land of Giant Mushrooms and Walking Jellyfish.
- Of course, the second expansion is basically World Of Warcraft ON ICE! This troper thinks that it's kind of a neat twist-up, though now he's picturing a very literal "On Ice" version and that's REALLY GODDAMN SCARY.
- This troper is personally hoping for World Of Warcraft UNDER WATER in a future expansion.
- Recent licensed games based on The Simpsons are notorious for this. The Simpsons Skateboarding, Road Rage and Hit And Run are Tony Hawks Pro Skater, Crazy Taxi and Grand Theft Auto, in that order, IN SPRINGFIELD! Fortunately, only the first one was as predictably bad as most licensed games.
- Likewise for many Star Wars games - Dark Forces, Force Commander and Battlefront were respectively Doom, Command And Conquer and Battlefield A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY!
- Similarly, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds was Age of Empires II with different units and new names for the resources.
- Knights Of The Old Republic was Neverwinter Nights AN EVEN LONGER TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY! Correspondingly, Mass Effect is Knights Of The Old Republic IN AN ORIGINAL CANON!
- Be careful, though, about comparing any game to Doom. Being a First Person Shooter is just one aspect: Doom's all about the Ludicrous Gibs and most FPS games - most games, period - are more plot-driven. And Doom was already IN SPACE! - taking place on Mars.
- Also, don't forget, Force Commander was never made, though a pair of AWESOME Imperial March remixes were.
- As far as this troper can tell, Rogue Galaxy is Skies Of Arcadia IN SPACE!
- Not that that's a bad thing.
- Star Fox Adventures pretty much became Legend Of Zelda IN SPACE! when Nintendo replaced the setting with ''StarFox'' characters and also made it a game that didn't please the fans of the series at all. Before that, it was more like Legend Of Zelda WITH FURRIES!, something Rare has done quite a few times with more success (Mario 64-> Banjo-Kazooie, Mario Kart -> Diddy Kong Racing, not to mention the older Donkey Kong games).
- For that matter, Star Fox is pretty much Star Wars WITH FURRIES! Or perhaps furries IN SPACE! Whatever floats your
boat Arwing.
- Worms: A Space Oddity is Worms IN SPACE! ON THE WII!
- Crusader Kings is Europa Universalis IN THE MIDDLE AGES!, Victoria is Europa Universalis IN THE 19TH CENTURY! and Hearts of Iron is Europa Universalis IN WORLD WAR II AND POTENTIALLY WORLD WAR III!, with the cool twist that you can play them in chronological order and carry your save game forward into the next game.
- This isn't necessarily true. While all Paradox games share similarities, CK, EU, Vicky, and HOI have some massive differences between them.
- Grandia Xtreme is Grandia WITH MARK HAMILL! (and XTREME!)
- Space Siege is Dungeon Siege IN SPACE!
- Earthbound is like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest SET IN THE PRESENT TIME, USING BATS AND PSYCHIC POWERS INSTEAD OF SWORDS AND MAGIC! It was still a weird and good game regardless.
- So Earthbound is therefore Final Fantasy NOT IN SPACE! Er, NOT IN FANTASY!
- Well, of course it's not in space! That's why it's called EARTHBOUND!
- Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is essentially Call Of Duty IN THE PRESENT DAY!
- Even the media is agreeing (in completely the wrong way) with the fan complaint that Fallout 3 will be Oblivion with guns, even some assets appear to be recycled (for examples, Fallout 3s "Super Mutants" appear to be touched up Orcs).
- Metal Gear Solid is Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake IN ALASKA!. Metal Gear Solid 2 is Metal Gear Solid WITH POSTMODERNISM AND IN NEW YORK! The entire series can probably be described inversely as Splinter Cell ON LARGE AMOUNTS OF PSYCHEDELICS!
- Okami is The Legend Of Zelda WITH JAPANESE MYTHOLOGY!
- Heavenly Sword is God Of War IN ANCIENT CHINA, WITH A GIRL!
- Tomb Raider is Indiana Jones WITH A WOMAN
- This is not surprising since the creators wanted to originally make Tomb Raider with a male protagonist, but went with a woman in fear that it will be too similar to Indiana Jones.
- Classic example: Kabuki Quantum Fighter is Ninja Gaiden INSIDE A COMPUTER! WITH KABUKI ACTORS! And it's awesome.
- MMORPG Eve Online had enough UI problems for the some players to start calling it Microsoft Excel IN SPACE!
- Final Fantasy XII is Star Wars IN A FANTASY SETTING!
- Appropriate, given that Star Wars is literally your typical fantasy adventure story IN SPACE!
- This troper would like to nominate FF 2 for Star Wars IN A FANTASY SETTING!. Just play through the game and count the similarities...
- Not exactly the whole series recycled, but just the concepts. In Super Robot Wars OG Gaiden, fighting style Kishin Ken is Hokuto Shinken IN HUMONGOUS MECHA!
- The Ganbare Goemon games stars the Japanese folk hero Ishikawa Goemon AS A HIGHLY VISIBLE NINJA IN A WIDGET GAME SERIES WITH SCHIZO TECH AND HUMONGOUS MECHA! Ishikawa Goemon, in turn, is ROBIN HOOD IN FEUDAL JAPAN! All oddness and cultural differences aside, they're actually pretty good.
- American Mc Gees Alice is Alicein Wonderland COMING DOWN FROM HEROIN!
- Primal Rage is Mortal Kombat WITH DINOSAURS AND GORILLAS!
Anime
- Gankutsuou is The Count of Monte Cristo IN SPACE!
- Studio Gonzo loves these. In addition to Gankutsuou, Gonzo is also responsible for Samurai 7 (Seven Samurai WITH MECHA!), Glass Fleet (the French Revolution IN SPACE!), and Romeo X Juliet (Romeo And Juliet ON A FLOATING CITY WITH CROSSDRESSING AND MAGIC TREES!).
- Soukou No Strain is A Little Princess IN SPACE WITH MECHA!
- Ikkitousen is Romance Of The Three Kingdoms AS A HIGH SCHOOL PANTY FIGHTER ANIME!
- Hakugei: Legend of the Moby Dick is... well, Moby Dick IN SPACE!
- Idolmaster Xenoglossia is the Idolm@ster video game IN SPACE WITH MECHA!
- Gun Frontier is literally Captain Harlock (or at least one of his Identical Ancestors) IN THE OLD WEST!
- Trigun would be Grenadier IN SPACE!, if Trigun didn't predate Grenadier by six years. So instead, Grenadier is Tri Gun IN FEUDAL JAPAN, WITH FANSERVICE, SHORTER AND WITH LESS CEREBUS SYNDROME!
- In a more sinister fashion, the Trigun manga is World War II IN SPACE WITH POST-APOCALYPTIC SCI-FI!
- SF Saiyuuki Starzinger is Journey To The West IN SPACE!, although the producers of Force Five tried to Macekre it into The Three Musketeers IN SPACE! when it was dubbed as Spaceketeers.
- The Wonderful Galaxy of Oz is the Wizard Of Oz...in space. I'm refusing to asscap that.
- I'll do it for you then. IN SPACE!
- Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series is Yu-Gi-Oh
IN AMERICA! IN BRITAIN!
- Dragonball is Journey to the West IN... in.. well, it's in SOMEWHERE!
- In TORIYAMA'S FANTASY WORLD!
- On that note, Saiyuki is Journey to the West WITH SCHIZO TECH!
- Lost Universe is Slayers...IN SPACE (VERY literally, too, since it takes place in the same cosmology.)
- Uninhabited Planet Survive is Two Years' Vacation IN 22TH CENTURY... AND SPACE!
- Nadia The Secret Of Blue Water is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea WITH GIANT MECHAS AND ON CRACK.
- Kinnikuman originally was Ultraman AS A MORON but eventually became Professional Wrestling WITH THE FATE OF THE WORLD AT STAKE.
- To a greater or lesser extent, Naruto is Dragonball WITH NINJAS and One Piece is Dragonball WITH PIRATES - although they both use pretty different parts of the original and have a lot of their own stuff to add. Most of all, however, Bleach is 'Dragonball WITH SWORDS AND GHOSTS AND ENGRISH! It has more changes listed because they are pretty much all of the changes.
- Gintama is Rurouni Kenshin WITH ALIENS AND TOILET HUMOR!
- Pluto is Astro Boy WITH SERIAL KILLERS!
- ...Except that Pluto is a retelling of a famous Astro Boy plot that focuses on different characters.
- Meaning it's literally "Astro Boy WITH SERIAL KILLERS". Or a serial killer, rather.
- Hmm... Humongous Mecha, a red-haired girl in revealing clothing, a Kid Hero who uses a mining tool, a pessimistic Big Bad, prejudice between humans and a superior race, a mysterious girl who is permanently separated from the heroes at the end and "Nothing is impossible!" being the main message... well, that settles it. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is Wild Arms 5 IN SPACE!
- Black Jack is House MD STARRING BATMAN.
- Or the converse, because of the chronology.
- Fist Of The North Star is, for all intents and purposes, Mad Max STARRING BRUCE LEE!
- Cyberbrain Sclerosis is Cancer FOR CYBORGS!
- Samurai 7 is Seven Samurai WITH MECHA. Actually quite literally that.
- Gundam 00 is Full Metal Panic 300 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE!
- Lucky Star is Seinfeld IN A JAPANESE HIGH SCHOOL! WITH MOE!
Comic Books
- Green Arrow was originally Batman WITH A ROBIN HOOD MOTIF! (So it fits somehow that they cooperated against Superman in The Dark Knight Returns)
- Usagi Yojimbo is Yojimbo (plus a laundry list of other Samurai stories and tropes) AS TALKING ANIMALS!, and has its very own spin-off IN SPACE!
- Jink and The Rebels are Elf Quest IN THE FUTURE! Many fans hated them.
- Ramayan 3392 AD is the Ramayama IN THE POSTAPOCALYPTIC FUTURE!
- Rapunzel's Revenge is the Rapunzel story IN A SCHIZOTECH OLD WEST!
- Marvel actually had a What If story called "What If Sgt Fury Fought WWII in Outer Space?", which was Exactly What It Says On The Tin. (It was actually surprisingly good.)
Live Action TV
- There is a Power Rangers series literally titled Power Rangers In Space. Interestingly, it is considered a classic among Power Rangers series with its introduction of a fully serialized plot and "sympathetic and multi-dimensional villains" (quoting That Other Wiki), as well as the spectacular finale Countdown to Destruction (aka "Crisis of Infinite Rangers"). Power Rangers in Space single-handedly saved the show from being canceled, after the debacle of Turbo.
- On the other hand, the next series, ''Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy" is sometimes referred to as Power Rangers LOST IN SPACE!
- Many episodes of the 1970s Battlestar Galactica are lifted from classic movies;
- The Gun on Ice Planet Zero = The Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra
- Both movies were based on books by Alistair MacLean.
- The Magnificent Warriors = The Magnificent Seven which itself was a western version of Seven Samurai
- The Lost Warrior = Shane
- Fire in Space = The Towering Inferno
- Murder on the Rising Star = Murder on the Orient Express
- Thats So Raven is Lizzie Mcguire WITH A PSYCHIC!
- Many episodes of Hercules The Legendary Journeys and Xena Warrior Princess are lifted from classic movies, themes or tropes, especially in later seasons. (Probably too many to list individually!)
- The Movie of The Honeymooners was WITH BLACK PEOPLE!
- The Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror" is the 1957 WWII submarine movie "The Enemy Below" IN SPACE! Even the bearing of the unidentified initial contact and the captain's maneuvering orders to the helm are copied nearly verbatim. The Romulan ship is cramped and has LOTS OF PIPING AND CONDUITS IN ALL BACKGROUND SCENES.
- Sea Quest DSV was effectively Star Trek The Next Generation OUT OF SPACE , much more pronouncedly so after the end of TNG's run (In the very first seaQuest episode after TNG ended, an alien race arrives in a ship whose design was quite obviously lifted from that of the Borg Cube).
- And this wasn't the first one; Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea was Star Trek (The original series) ON A SUBMARINE
- And Sea Quest 2032 was seaQuest DSV A BIT FARTHER IN THE FUTURE!
- This may mean that seaQuest is its own grandpa
- Stargate SG-1 is Stargate IN SPACE!
- And following that, Stargate Infinity was Stargate SG-1 IN THE FUTURE!
- Stargate Infinity is not canon. However, Stargate Atlantis is Stargate SG-1 IN ANOTHER GALAXY! (but absolutely not far far away).
- I dunno, another galaxy is, by definition, pretty far, far away.
- Not to mention how the episode "200" toyed with this concept. Imaginary pitching segments show SG-1 AS TEENAGERS! and the show remade WITH PUPPETS!, among other things.
- Commenters to Gateworld are already calling the new spinoff Stargate: Universe "90210 in Space!" and "Gossip Girl in SPACE". And they're none too pleased about it, either.
- Based on the premise, it may be more accurate to label it as Star Trek Voyager...IN THE PRESENT!
- seaQuest DSV was Star Trek UNDERWATER!
- Heroes is X-Men IN THE REAL WORLD!
- Ever heard of Deconstruction?
- To be fair, Tim Kring, the creator of Heroes, never read/watched X-Men, so the recycle was unintentional.
- There are just too many parallels for it to be coincidence, and someone knew enough about the comics to name a one-shot character after Chris Claremont. The Shanti virus is most obviously borrowed: they may as well stop pretending and call it the Legacy Virus. It definitely belongs here, but remember: Tropes Are Not Bad.
- You can probably blame that and any other comics shout-outs, allusions, or similarities on Jeph Loeb, a writer and producer on Heroes who's also quite well known for his comics work.
- One of the criticisms of Andromeda was that it eventually became Hercules The Legendary Journeys IN SPACE!
- Mind you, people were criticizing it for that long before it actually happened.
- The Doctor Who episode "Voyage of the Damned" was The Poseidon Adventure IN SPACE!
- Half of all Doctor Who episodes ever are "Hammer Horror/Classic Literature/Contemporary Movie/Greek Mythology etc. WITH ALIENS! Doctor Who author Ben Aaronovitch once said that "Talent borrows, genius steals, and Doctor Who authors get it wholesale off the back of a lorry."
- The Fourth Doctor story The Androids of Tara is The Prisoner Of Zenda IN SPACE!
- The Tenth Doctor story Human Nature is the Seventh Doctor novel Human Nature</
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