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 What? Chick'N Bash is an Angry Birds ripoff? No, see, there's a chicken and the pigs are pink instead of green. It's completely different.
"I was not worried by my lack of local legal money, my lack of tangible assets of any sort. A beautiful summer day in Iowa leaves no room for worry. I could work and would-spreading manure if that was the sort of work available. And I would soon spread manure of another sort, moonlighting nights and Sundays. In 2177 Evelyn Fingerhut had not yet retired, so pick some new pen names and sell him the same old tripe. The same stories-just file off the serial numbers.
File off the serial numbers, change the body lines a bit. give it a new paint job, switch it over the state line, and it's yours!- that's the secret of literary success. Editors always claim to be looking for new stories but they don't buy them; they buy "mixture as before." Because the cash customers want to be entertained, not amazed, not instructed, not frightened."
—Richard Campbell in Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
[The little boy] walks away, and is immediately pursued by a creature that's so obviously a Freddy Krueger rip-off that I won't hear arguments to the contrary, should they even exist.
When a Follow the Leader seems to be almost exactly like the leader, just with "the Serial Numbers Filed Off". The blatant copying of characters and plot is on a level that would make even makers of The Mockbuster blush. Although that need not mean the quality is bad.
Sometimes this can be by the very creators of the source work, perhaps as a form of applying Captain Ersatz to an entire series. See Alternate Company Equivalent.
Named because some stolen goods (particularly firearms) would have the serial numbers filed off to make them untraceable.
Compare Mission Pack Sequel (when a follow-up is almost just like the first game), Better by a Different Name, Spiritual Licensee, Spiritual Successor, They Copied It, So It Sucks, Recycled Script, Divorced Installment.
Fanfic writers will sometimes convert their fanfics into original properties as an Ascended Fanfic. In the event that the original fanfic is available, you can actually directly see which character was filed off into which character by comparing the orginal fanfic with the new work.
Contrast Dolled-Up Installment, In Name Only (both are when a work seems to have the serial numbers of another work scribbled on), Shoddy Knockoff Product (a ripoff that seeks to look like a work, but is a very poor copy).
—Couch Baron in Television Without Pity's recap of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Killed by Death"
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