Recycled Script - Television Tropes & Idioms

Samurai Champloo had an episode in which a sympathetic thief befriends a main character, then is killed trying to steal for a sick relative, that closely followed the plot of an earlier Cowboy Bebop episode. The main difference is that the Cowboy Bebop episode had a Bittersweet Ending where the thief manages to get his sister what she needed, the Samurai Champloo one has a full Downer Ending where he dies without any implication that his mother could afford the medicine or even continue her regular life.
Pokemon tends to recycle scripts quite often in the newer Diamond and Pearl seasons, usually Kanto and Johto plots. Notably, Jessie's Dustox's release, and Pikachu getting beat by a Raichu, and Ash asking if it wanted to evolve..
- Then again, the whole series started to use the same exact formula for each episode since Ruby and Sapphire seasons over and over and over and over and over again...
Naruto had two whole filler arcs (The Land of Birds, and the Land of Vegetables) that were basically a rehash of the main plot of the first movie: Naruto's team needs to escort a noblewoman in hiding that is cold and distant because of a past tragedy, but becomes a Defrosting Ice Queen through her experience with Naruto and by the end is prepared to fulfill their duty happily.
- Also, the "Curry of Life" filler arc features a villain who was a former member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist who is partnered with a young boy that was ostracized for his bloodline limits (Raiga and Ranmaru)—which is largely a retread of the villains of the Land of Waves arc (Zabuza and Haku).
Bleach's Soul Society arc had Ichigo fighting through impossibly difficult enemies to save his friend, using an ability that he had previously gained to win his battles. The Hueco Mundo arc? Well, it has Ichigo fighting through impossibly difficult enemies to save his friend, using an ability that he had previously gained to win his battles.
- The mandatory uniform for said captured friend is a white dress, no less. The new enemies are introduced through a Red Oni Blue Oni pair that beat up Ichigo, giving him the need to train. And of course the badguys were just being used by Aizen all along, the point driven home by him suddenly deciding to stab a girl.
- Also: In the Bount arc, the heroes fight Jin Kariya, a White Haired Pretty Boy who wants to take over the Soul Society because he and his Bounts were exiled long ago. In Memories of Nobody, the heroes fight Ganryu, a White Haired Pretty Boy who wants to take over the Soul Society because he and his Dark Ones were exiled long ago. As if to accent the similarities, the same voice actor plays both Jin and Ganryu in English.
- Fade to Black intentionally recycles old plots to play with the characters' memories. On the other hand the villains have Aaroniero Arruruerie and Kaien's recycled background, complete with Rukia guilt, but are not supposed to remind anybody.
In the original Speed Racer manga, two issues include identical scenes in which Racer X tries to scare Speed away from a race. They're actual reprints, panel-for-panel, word-for-word, except for the name of the race.

Was common practice at DC Comics in the 1950's-1960's because the audience was mostly children, and turned over fast. Two characters in the Legion Of Super Heroes, Mon-El and Star Boy, first appeared in rewritten stories of this sort. See Nohamotyo.
This Troper has seen Red Meat re-use the exact same script a few times, with only the graphics slightly changed.
When José Carioca's Brazilian comic series started getting popular, writers found themselves running out of ideas (it was a bi-weekly comic at the time). The solution was to recycle Donald Duck/Micky Mouse cartoons and replace the main characters with José. Since they made sure to only use English stories that weren't localized yet, it sort of worked, at least if you ignore Joe acting out of character or interacting with characters he doesn't normally interact with (such as Goofy).
Archie Comics does this to a huge degree, which makes sense given it's seventy-year run with multiple comics. And all the Digests that come out monthly, featuring anthologies of older stories. Running gags & themes abound, often creating the exact same stories and situations. Among the more egregious examples, however, comes from the modern "New Look" stories- Titles, concepts, character names and slices of dialogue are completely taken from the "Archie Novels" series from the early 90s. Betty & Ronnie's fight over "Nick St. Claire", Archie moving away, Moose & Midge's breakup, etc., are all direct copies of prior work.

On the big screen, the 60s James Bond film Thunderball was recycled into 1983's Never Say Never Again with only a few minor tweaks to reflect the passing of time. The plot, names of several major characters, and even the actor playing Bond (Sean Connery) were otherwise unchanged. This was the result of a lawsuit by a writer who had contributed ideas to the original Thunderball, who was trying to leverage this into permission to make his own Bond movies; the verdict was essentially that he could make as many remakes of Thunderball as he liked.
- Die Another Day didn't go as far, but completely copied the primary weapon of the villain, an orbiting satellite made of smuggled diamonds that shot down nuclear missiles, and the fact that he teamed up with a foreign agent that happened to be the only girl he slept with that movie. I understand that they wanted to reference previous movies for number twenty, but that was a little much.
- Let's not forget The Spy Who Loved Me, concerning a vehicle-eating vehicle and Bond pairing up with a foreign female agent, not unlike You Only Live Twice. The idea of a world-destroying villain in favor of supporting living in anywhere but on land itself is later recycled on Moonraker, which is later recycled on 007:Nightfire. Nightfire's script is recycled from a movie script recycled from a movie script recycled from a movie script.
Meet The Parents had a guy planning to propose to his girlfriend, but then has to meet her parents. He spray paints a cat, takes a lie detector test, and accidentally ruins their dinner with her grandmother's remains. The Sequel, meet the fockers had the same guy planning to marry his girlfriend, but she has to meet HIS parents. His dog gets dyed blue, he is given a truth serum, and accidentally ruins dinner with his foreskin.
The script of the cancelled sequel to Masters of the Universe was rewritten to make the film Cyborg.

Douglas Adams' novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency reused several key concepts from "Shada", a story he had written for Doctor Who but which had been unfinished due to strike action (and elements of "City of Death", which was broadcast). Another Adams novel, Life, the Universe, and Everything, began its life as a Doctor Who screenplay called The Krikketmen.
Agatha Christie did this several times. The Poirot short story Yellow Iris became the Colonel Race novel Sparkling Cyanide; the Poirot novellas Murder in the Mews and Dead Man's Mirror (which were published together) were based on the Poirot short stories "The Market Basing Mystery" and "The Second Gong", respectively; the Poirot novel The Blue Train uses the same device as the Poirot short story "The Plymouth Express"; and two Poirot stories, "Problem at Pollensa Bay" and "The Regatta Mystery", were later rewritten to be about Mr Parker Pyne. Note that Poirot, Race and Pyne all exist in the same universe.
When Robert E. Howard's By This Axe I Rule!, a short story featuring his barbarian king Kull of Atlantis, was rejected by Weird Tales, he changed its setting and replaced Kull with a new protagonist he had been toying with — Conan of Cimmeria — and it became "The Phoenix on the Sword", the first of nearly two dozen stories starring the character.
- In an interesting reversal, the script for a third Conan film — Conan The Conqueror — was offered to Kevin Sorbo. Sorbo balked at the role, hoping to avoid the inevitable comparisons to Arnold Schwarzenegger, so the script was modified to be about King Kull instead, giving us Kull the Conqueror. (No, we can't give it back. Should've kept the receipt.)
Chris Van Allsburg recycled his book Jumanji, about a magic safari-themed board game that draws the players into its world, into Zathura, which is about a magic sci-fi-themed board game that draws the players into its world. Jumanji was later adapted into a movie; several years later, so was Zathura, and many of the changes to the plot of Jumanji were also put into Zathura` (for instance, both films introduced a character who had been trapped in the game world since childhood, since he started a game and didn't finish it).
Any Goosebumps book with a "II" in the title.
- The Monster Blood sub-series mostly avoided this to a degree.
Some of the stories written for the Berenstain Bears Scouts series were simply extended versions of the episodes from the 1980s cartoon series.
Some Jeeves And Wooster stories, about a thick-headed young English gentleman and his ingenious valet, were adapted from PG Wodehouse's earlier Reggie Pepper series, about a thick-headed young English gentleman and... no one in particular.

The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman shared a fair number of scripts. The most obvious of these was a plot involving a crash on a remote island, stranding the bionic individual with a lot of extras plus a coworker from OSI (Oscar for Steve, Rudy for Jaime). The coworker is seriously injured, but there is a doctor among the survivors who can save him despite the primitive conditions; to help him do so, though, Steve/Jaime must cut open a finger on their bionic hand and bare two wires so that the doctor can cauterize a blood vessel.
Not the same show, but from the same writer: Kenneth Johnson wrote the two part The Six Million Dollar Man episode intoducing Jaime, who was to be married to Steve until her bionics (recently acquired in the course of the two-parter's first half) malfunctioned and she ran amuck during a tropical storm, after which she died from her condition. A couple of years later Kenny would write the season two opener of The Incredible Hulk, where David Banner fell in love with a doctor with a terminal brain disease — that causes her to run amuck in a tropical storm until she died.
The Bionic Woman and Gemini Man once shared a script about a lookalike for the title character infiltrating the agency where she/he works despite being ignorant of the main character's superhuman abilities. They are an assassin, targeting the main character's superior. At the climax, the hero(ine) and the double are both claiming to be the real deal; the hero(ine) proves his/her identity by using their special abilities — one by bionic-jumping to the top of a tree, the other by turning invisible.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century had a script, "Journey To Oasis", which was very nearly identical to the original Star Trek episode "Journey To Babel". Actor Marc Lenard even appeared in both, playing very nearly the same character.
In what is probably a specialized case, The New Odd Couple recycled eight scripts that were written for the original version of The Odd Couple.
An episode of Step By Step had the exact same plot as an episode of Happy Days. A character is dating a woman. Another character suspects that the woman may secretly be a popular stripper (who wears a mask). They notice that the woman has a very distinctive laugh. So they hire the stripper in order to make her laugh and prove her identity.
Similarly, Star Trek The Next Generation recycled two scripts that had been written for Star Trek: Phase II, the original proposed sequel series to Star Trek The Original Series (they decided to do movies instead). The Next Generation also recycled some scripts that were used in the Original Series.
- After three years of the original series and eighteen years for its spin-offs, scripts began to be borrowed and recycled from within each show and across the franchise as a whole. For example, the basic script for the original series episode "Elaan of Troyius" was recycled twice. It got particularly bad with Enterprise, which was accused of being a recycle of Voyager as a whole set in the past.
- The ending of Star Trek Nemesis was basically the ending of Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan. And the first half of Nemesis was basically the first half of Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country. If you're going to steal from your own franchise, you could at least not steal wholesale from the most popular of its feature films.
- Not only was Star Trek The Motion Picture's plot based on the script for the cancelled Phase II pilot, but it bore a striking similarity to an episode from the original series, "The Changeling".
And Star Trek Voyager was often considered just a recycle of Next Gen, as the next example shows.
- The Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Lonely Among Us" featured an Energy Being that is able to possess people and machines, and takes over the ship. A Star Trek Voyager episode later used almost exactly the same plotline, but with the Framing Device of having Neelix telling the story of what happened to some children. By chance (probably), the Voyager episode ended up airing back-to-back with a repeat of the Next Generation episode when it was shown on BBC2.
24 scripts on Bewitched were recycled scene by scene. One was recycled twice. Most of these were episodes featuring the first Darrin that were recycled with The Other Darrin. Since some were two-parters, this means a total of 55 of the 254 episodes, 22% of the entire show, weren't unique. In addition to these completely recycled scripts, there were also many that had similar premises but were different in the particulars, and many individual scenes and gags that were recycled in otherwise original episodes.
Stargate Atlantis has reused a few scripts from Stargate SG-1, usually with a Lampshade Hanging. In the Atlantis episode, "The Intruder", McKay comments on how the SGC faced a similar situation before (in the SG-1 episode "Entity"). The SG-1 episode "Grace" has a sister Atlantis episode "Grace Under Pressure". There was even a week in which the two shows, airing back-to-back, featured very similar, yet unrelated enemies haunting each team's base: SG-1 had to deal with Anubis in "Lockdown", and the Atlantis team faced an alien being in "Hide and Seek". Both enemies took the form of inky black Energy Beings and were disposed of the same way — through the stargate.
The late-1980s remake of Mission Impossible recycled many scripts from the original series virtually verbatim.
- Justfied, actually, since the show did debut right in the middle of the 1988 Writer's Strike.
The X Files reworked season one episode "Ice" (about a parasitic alien that caused its victims to turn psychopathic and eventually die) into the season two episode "Firewalker" (you can probably guess the main difference). Both were based, in turn, on the classic John W. Campbell short story "Who Goes There?".
The Avengers occasionally recycled its own scripts during the Emma Peel seasons, when Cathy Gale scripts would be given an overhaul. For example, "The Joker" is a creepier version of the Gale story "Don't Look Behind You".
- Likewise the New Avengers episode "Complex" is essentially a remake of the original series episode "Killer".
The plot of the Thunder In Paradise episode "Endangered Species" (a wolf child turns out to be the heir of a murdered co-owner of an aviation company, and the other co-owner wants to finish the job) was also featured in an episode of The Wizard.
- And before that, it was an episode of Manimal.
One episode of The Brady Bunch in which Bobby pretends he's sick in order to get a visit from his favorite professional athlete, Joe Namath, was later re-used on Diffrent Strokes with Muhammad Ali.
After Curly Howard's stroke, The Three Stooges attempted to get the audience attached to his replacement Shemp by making several of their old shorts over again with Shemp in the Curly part. Results were less than successful.
Both Out Of This World and Sabrina The Teenage Witch did episodes where a hurt finger prevented the protagonist from using her magical powers at a key moment.
- And where the magical protagonist used her powers to catch someone paying off a shady character, and deciding that the "only possible explanation" was that they were involved in illegal activities, only to later have to undo the damage to their reputation when it turns out that they were actually doing charity work while trying to protect the privacy of the charity recipients.
USA High seemed to rip off quite a few Saved By The Bell premises and plots.
- Saved by the Bell did this themselves quite a bit, with Saved by the Bell: The New Class ripping off a number of plots from the original series.
The Twilight Zone tended to run into this somewhat, especially considering that it is An Aesop as discussed in the main article. Particularly interesting is that two episodes of the same recycled script will end with the Family Unfriendly Aesop version of the other's moral.
Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda was rife with this. First off, several basic concepts for the series were recycled from other aborted Gene Roddenberry TV projects. The character of Dylan Hunt, complete with name, was borrowed from Planet Earth and Genesis II, a pair of never-picked-up TV pilots from the 1970's about a man frozen in time for 300 years who awakens to find civilization in ruins following a nuclear war. The idea of the starship's computer AI being self-aware and having a female body it could walk around in was stolen from a rejected early concept for what eventually became Star Trek The Next Generation. Another rejected Star Trek spinoff concept had featured a Federation starship, the USS Andromeda, frozen in time at the edge of a black hole, released 300 years later to find the Federation had fallen in a war with the Klingons, and the crew deciding to rebuild The Federation. On top of all that, an early episode featuring Dylan Hunt being able to briefly communicate with his wife who was still stuck back in the past was based on a rejected script for Star Trek Voyager by the same screenwriters.
An episode of Friends had Monica obsessing over a switch which didn't seem to do anything, and spent the episode going to further and further extremes to figure out what the switch did. The episode ended with her flicking it on and off, deciding that it did nothing, but we see it actually turns the TV on and off in Chandler and Joey's apartment. A clear recycle of a Married with Children episode where Al spends the episode obsessing over a switch that doesn't seem to do anything, going to further and further extremes to figure out what it did. The episode ended with Al flicking it on and off, deciding that it did nothing, but we see that it actually turns the lights on and off in the dog house.
- This was further recycled from (or into) a bit in Stephen Wright's stand-up comedy routine, where he tells of having such a switch in his house which he flicked randomly every time he passed it — until he got a letter from a woman in China demanding he knock it off.
- Recycled again into a commercial (can't remember for what) featuring a man asking his wife the question while repeatedly toggling the switch. Cut to the neighbor's car getting smashed by the neighbor's garage door cycling up and down with the switch.
- Another episode of Friends had Chandler learning a lesson about not breaking up with women over petty little Man Hands reasons — something which he'd never done before, and would never do again, throughout the history of the show. The exact same thing happened to JD in an episode of Scrubs, but it had already been established as a plot device in an episode from an earlier season that JD has never broken up with a girlfriend in his entire life, ever.
  - The above paragraph was recycled from the Broken Aesop entry.
In its last two seasons, MacGyver started recycling material from its earlier seasons, but with more emphasis on the Aesop than on the story itself.
The Doctor Who story "The Seeds of Doom" (by Robert Banks Stewart) was recycled from the Avengers "Man-Eater of Surrey Green." (Stewart had written for The Avengers, though I'm not sure if he wrote that episode.) "The Seeds of Doom" feels wrong for a Doctor Who story in many ways, since it follows the Avengers formula. For example, the (Fourth) Doctor casually jumps on top of a bad guy and punches him out.
- This Troper recalls hearing that the entire fifth season, with the exception of one story, is just the same plot (a base under siege by aliens) over and over and over.
MST3K reused several of the films they riffed on during their initial season on a local UHF station after going national. Several host segment sketches were also remade later.
Charmed did a lot of these in the final season.
The Easter Bunny is Coming to Town is pretty much just Santa Claus is Coming to Town with the origins of Easter traditions in place of Christmas traditions.
Kids Incorporated did pretty well for its first five seasons, but recycled stories from the early years abounded in the later seasons. For example, season 6's "Karate Kids" is almost identical to season 1's "The Bully" (The only substantive difference is that Robin actually learns Karate, whereas The Kid just pretended to have done so), down to the opening scene where the bullied character sneaks on-stage and performs wearing a Conspicuous Trenchcoat and dark glasses. Also, at least three episodes, near-carbon-copies of each other, have the Kids get a taste of super-stardom which nearly breaks the band up as they all forget how to work together.
Possible case: Both How I Met Your Mother and Rules Of Engagement featured an episode where the show's resident Lothario runs into the older woman to whom he lost his virginity (complete with "Mrs. Robinson" reference). The Lothario, reminded of his poor early performance, determines to sleep with her again despite her having gone from middle-aged to a senior citizen, and Hilarity Ensues. What made this example stick out so much is the the episodes in question first aired on the same night, on the same channel, within an hour of each other.
Two episodes in the fourth series of Monty Pythons Flying Circus consisted largely of material lifted from the first draft of Monty Python And The Holy Grail. Some of this material was written by John Cleese, who otherwise had nothing to do with the fourth series.
One of the episodes of ABC's revival of Columbo - "Uneasy Lies the Crown" - was a remake of an episode of Mc Millian & Wife (by then just called Mc Millian) titled "Affair of the Heart" in which a dentist manages to kill someone and not be anywhere near the crime scene by placing digitalis under a newly capped tooth
The season 3 M*A*S*H episode "White Gold" has a scene where Hawkeye and Trapper slip a mickey to Col. Flagg so they can perform an unnecessary appendectomy on him and put him out of commission, thus allowing the soldier Flagg's after (an aid-station medic who'd stolen some much-needed penicillin from the 4077th) to return to his unit unscathed. While it's more or less played for laughs, a very similar plot would be used to much more serious effect in season 8's "Preventative Medicine": in that episode, Hawkeye performs the unnecessary surgery on a gung-ho colonel so he can't lead his troops into a suicidal objective, but B.J. will have nothing to do with it, accusing Hawkeye of violating their ethical code as doctors.
- Ken Levine, one of the show's executive story editors at the time of the later episode, has stated that the similar plot was entirely unintentional, and that when they discovered it they were so embarrassed that they deliberately had their episode scheduled opposite the Academy Awards ceremony so it would be seen by the smallest possible audience.

A related phenomenon in musicals is the recycling of lyrics:
- "I Remember It Well" originally appeared in the Broadway musical Love Life, but remained extremely obscure until its lyric was recycled (with some revisions) for the movie Gigi, set to completely different music.
- "Put Me To The Test" was a Cut Song from the movie A Damsel In Distress, used as dance music only. Its lyric was salvaged and put to use in the movie Cover Girl.
This applies to music as well. In musical theatre, recycled songs are known as "Trunk Songs" - songs that were written for one show, cut, and subsequently lay at the bottom of the composer's trunk until he was in Boston with a new show that desperately needed a new song in seconds flat, at which point he pulled the song out of the trunk (the lyrics often being replaced entirely). It's a testament to the craft of the songwriters how seamlessly some of these songs fit into their new context. A few examples:
- The music for both "One Hand, One Heart" and "Somewhere" were originally composed by Leonard Bernstein for Candide and subsequently dropped. When West Side Story required new material but Bernstein was too busy working on Candide, he handed these songs over to lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
- Jules Styne's music for one particular song had been used in - and discarded from - several shows, before it wound up permanently in Gypsy as "You'll Never Get Away From Me".
- Stephen Schwartz has stated that his music for the "Goldfarb Variations" in The Magic Show was culled from a much earlier show he wrote while still a student. The dramatic moment called for a four-part fugue - quite a technical challenge to compose - and, since Schwartz had already composed one, he decided to put it to good use.
- A related example: many of the songs cut from Stephen Sondheim's Follies were re-used by choreographer Michael Bennett as material for the show's lengthy overture. The two songs featured most prominently are "All Things Bright And Beautiful" and "That Old Piano Roll".

One arc of Modesty Blaise had her being captured and placed in the bottom of a large hole with a bucket stuck on her head, as entertainment for two elderly murderers. The same plot was reused in an arc of Agent Corrigan.
The Comics Curmudgeon has noticed recycling in comic strips, most blatantly in Blondie and Family Circus, which exactly duplicated the layouts of the original strips.
Garfield ... "We're Bachelors baby!" not only does this "punch line" come back every couple of months, it was used for an entire week of comics.
Berke Breathed tended to reuse gags in his various comic strips. Of note: the "burger without a bun" gag, which was used in Bloom County's first comic. It came from Berke's previous comic The Academia Waltz, and was later reused AGAIN in Bloom County itself.
Beetle Bailey, which by now has a run of about half as many strips as there are atoms in the known universe, must have recycled hundreds of its jokes, almost certainly sometimes more than once. Since there are so many strips in existence, it's just conceivable Mort Walker just can't remember which ideas he has already used. But don't bet on it.

Professional Wrestling manager/promoter Jim Cornette, out of character, has put out a "rule" that angles or gimmicks can be recycled after about seven years, due to the shifting fanbase.

Not even Shakespeare was immune to this: Macbeth is a virtual rehash of Julius Caesar. Both tell the story of a general (Brutus/Macbeth) who, at the urging of a close companion (Cassius/Lady Macbeth), murders a ruler (Julius Caesar/King Duncan) and seizes power. After being haunted by their respective victims' ghosts, they are defeated by a former ally (Marc Antony/Macduff) in the name of the rightful heir (Octavius/Malcolm).

BioWare RPGs Neverwinter Nights, Knights Of The Old Republic, and Jade Empire all feature sidequests where you end up arguing your position before a panel of five judges against an insulting opponent. The connection is more explicit between NWN and KotOR: both sidequests feature a murder trial, the player character as the defense lawyer, and a defendant who did actually commit the crime (although in one case, the defendant was not responsible for his actions).
- This is arguably Rule Of Fun (or a repeated Scrappy Level if you didn't like them).
- While speaking of Bioware, how many NPCs in the player's party has bioware created with same trust issues?
- Also speaking of Bioware, their RP Gs somehow manage to shoehorn at least one Tower of Hanoi puzzle in them (I'm not sure about Jade Empire, but there is Naga Sadow's tomb in KotOR and the Rift Station in Mass Effect).
- Oh look, a chart◊.
Star Control 3 is a capital offender if this area, roughly 40% of the dialogue is ripped directly from the preceding game. The new lines are... lacking, to say the least.
For all the talk of Warcraft in Space!, Warcraft III has the same basic plot as Starcraft, with a hero if the first campaign becoming the Villain Protagonist of the second, followed by the various good guys including the Fallen Hero's ex-love interest uniting to stop them by teaming up in the final campaign, but ultimately failing to redeem them and not stopping them for good. There are several similar missions, and the Zerg and Undead even play extremely similarly in style, complete with backstories involving godlike precursors unleashing them. This troper thought of Arthas as Infested Arthas for a while...
A probably coincidental instance in animated series based on video games: The Super Mario World episode "Rock TV" has Bowser giving television sets to all the cavepeople and then hypnotizing them into turning against the Mario Bros. Ten years later, the Kirby Right Back At Ya episode "Un-Reality TV" has King Dedede giving television sets to all the Cappies and then hypnotizing them into turning against Kirby.
The first Metal Gear Solid borrowed several set-pieces from both of its MSX2 predecessors, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2, especially from the latter.
Let's see...Dark Is Not Evil, Light Is Not Good, Multiple Endings, villian protagonists that rarely transcend Disney levels of evil... yeah, I think Nippon Ichi might has reused some of their themes. Among other things.
- Nippon Ichi recycles so much material, they're practically a Green Aesop! ZING!

This one got a lampshade in an episode of I Am Weasel. In an Animated Actors episode, Weasel notes that the script has had his name crudely written in for "Buster Bunny", which in turn had been written over "Bugs Bunny". This pokes fun at Tiny Toon Adventures, whose whole series was based on the original Looney Tunes.
- That's a rather gross distortion. Since Tiny Toon Adventures was about the Looney Tunes characters teaching the next generation of characters, it was inevitable that the TTA cast would share character archetypes with their predecessors. In terms of scripts and stories, though, there was little to no recycling.
The episode "Dementia 5" was used, with very few changes, by two animated series made by the same studio. The series were Spider Man and Rocket Robin Hood.
Star Trek writer D.C. Fontana recycled her script for the episode "Yesteryear" from Star Trek The Animated Series into the Land Of The Lost episode "Elsewhen".
When scifi author Larry Niven was hired to write an episode of Star Trek The Animated Series, he took the plot of his short story "The Soft Weapon" and replaced three of the characters with Enterprise crew to create "The Slaver Weapon". It even featured one of his trademark alien species, the Kzinti, without alteration. (His rejected original proposal for the episode, meanwhile, became another short story, "The Borderlands of Sol".)
Duck Tales and Tale Spin both on the Disney Afternoon, did this with episodes that involved confusion over what the right date was ("Allowance Day" and "The Time Bandit", respectively), which led to an impending execution. The main character(s) were saved by a pilot (Launchpad and Baloo, respectively) who scooped away the clouds to reveal what day it really was (with an eclipse and a comet, respectively), proving who was right. Baloo mentioned that he was the first pilot who had ever done something like this, despite the fact that Tale Spin came out after Duck Tales. (It could be argued that because Tale Spin takes place in what appears to be The Thirties, Baloo would have been the first chronologically; a view taken by at least one crossover comic.)
- It's worth noting that "Allowance Day" and "The Time Bandit" were written by the same writers.
- Let's not forget that Tale Spin's basic premise borrows heavily from the later seasons of Cheers. I mean, really, they're both shows about a happy-go-lucky bachelor who loses his business to an uptight corporate ladder climber, then has to work for her to keep all that he holds dear. Rebecca Cunningham even looks a lot like Kirstie Alley's Rebecca Howe... if Kirstie Alley were a bear, anyway.
Many of the early Hanna-Barbera series reused stories from old Tom And Jerry cartoons (understandable, since the studio was made up of MGM artists), as well as a few Looney Tunes (Some of the Warners story men wrote for HB). For example, the T&J short "Pecos Pest", about a relative of Jerry's from Texas who comes to practice for a TV appearance and uses Tom's whiskers as guitar strings, was redone as a Pixie and Dixie short. Similarly, the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Windblown Hare", in which the Three Little Pigs sell Bugs their homes just as the Big Bad Wolf arrives, was redone with Yogi Bear.
Filmation recycled the premise of the He Man And The Masters Of The Universe episode "Day of the Machines" (Big Bad uses an Energy Being to tamper with the heroes' computers) into an episode of Filmation's Ghostbusters ("Cyman's Revenge").
- Not only that, but the writer of "Day of the Machines" also recycled the plot for an episode of Transformers — reusing not only the plot but also the title!
An unfinished Swat Kats episode called "The Curse of Kataluna" had its script recycled to make the Real Adventures of Jonny Quest episode "Eclipse" and Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.
- Which is probably why Zombie Island is so damn good.
Take a typical episode of Wacky Races, find a visual gag involving Dick Dastardly's attempt to stop the other racers, and the odds are pretty much even that you'll find an identical gag in a Chuck Jones Road Runner cartoon. (Michael Maltese is credited as a writer on both series.)

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