They Copied It So It Sucks - Television Tropes & Idioms

"That old Koopa may have thought he was super. But when you're talking Super Mario Bros., there's just no substitute for the real thing!"

—Toad, The Super Mario Brothers Super Show, "Super Koopa"

It's a Fargate! Not a Stargate! We'll put it in a wheelchair and give it a mohawk if we have to!"

—-Oglethorpe, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, "Universal Remonster"

So you're reading a review of the latest game to come down the pike, and you find a line that states said game is just like another title. And it is. Sorta. It may have been "inspired" by a more successful franchise, or it may be that the more successful franchise so changed the face of its medium that all future works in that medium demand a response.

One thing's for sure, though: The reviewer will act as though the similarity is all you need to know. It was Better By A Different Name.

There's a high demand for innovation and new ideas, so if a new work has similarities to an older or more popular one, expect those similarities to be the dominant subject in discussion about the work, even if they're entirely superficial. Some people go on to say "if you can't come up with an original idea, don't even bother trying to make the game." Despite the fact that most original works get ignored because of lack of advertising or that it's just not a name brand that you'd be crazy not to try and pry ideas from another source.

Of course, many times creators do borrow ideas from another work as inspiration to create new stories and concepts. Considering that just about everything has been done, it's difficult to properly think of something new and fresh. This is not always the case, however, as sometimes creators deliberately try to copy off a particular franchise as soon as its success becomes evident. They will immediately try to make something to compete — and most of the time it will fail miserably, because it was rushed or just implemented poorly. Other times it might come up with a really cool and ingenious new spin on the idea, and still never reach the same kind of popularity as its competition because somehow being too much like the original is deplorable.

The error here is the automatic assumption that just because something is similar, it can't have any value on its own merits. If everything that was derivative was that bad, it wouldn't be done so much. Some can actually be quite good on their own. See Cloning Gold.

This is the justification behind Sequelphobia. Compare Older Than They Think. Not to be confused with They Changed It Now It Sucks, where a sequel or an official adaptation changes an aspect of an original work for better or worse.

Examples:

Any sort of show or game with a monster-collecting or -raising element as a sidequest or main premise will inevitably draw comparisions to the genre maker, Pokemon.
- Bomberman has seen the harshest of criticism thus far with their Charaboms.
- Sometimes Digimon has the issue of being compared to Pokémon, despite the fact that the games came out a year later. This is a textbook case of Complaining About Shows You Dont Watch, as the existence of Mons is about the only thing the two franchises have in common.
  - Considering that the first game that featured monster collecting/raising was Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, which predates Digimon by about eight years, this is doubly Older Than They Think.
The original Dark Cloud game was compared to The Legend Of Zelda. Its sequel was, however, much more well-received.
- In a reversal, Okami was released a couple of months before Twilight Princess, as Link turned into a wolf and the similarities between the games many said Nintendo had stolen the idea.
  - Which is kind of funny because this Troper thinks Okami is the closet Zelda game the PS 2 got. But then it was ported to the Wii.
ScRyed is compared to X-Men a lot. Sometimes considered a rip-off entirely and dismissed because of that and more.
- There was also that TV show called Mutant X, where Mutant X was the name of a team of young adult mutant with superpowers (such as cat-like agility, Super Strength, telepathy, density shifting, the ability to throw lightning), formed by a scientist to defend the mutants and work for their integration in human society while an evil government conspiracy tried to capture or eliminate them and study them. Sound familiar?
  - It should. The show was created by Marvel Studios, and the suing and counter suing between Marvel, Fox and Tribune is epic.
- Push gets similar treatment, despite having far fewer similarities. Most people seem to ignore the fact that Stock Superpowers were around before X Men.
Duel Masters had this issue in being compared to Yu-Gi-Oh! for a good while, and Yu-Gi-Oh! itself is scoffed at by fans of Magic The Gathering.
- Which is interesting, because the author of Yu-Gi-Oh!! stated on a website that he based the card game in his series on Magic The Gathering.
Take a good look at any Mascot Racer and find one person who doesn't compare it to Mario Kart, and belittle it for trying to cash in on it.
- Likewise, any Party Game with a board element in it will inevitably be compared to Mario Party, unless it's a video game adaption of Monopoly or the like.
Several people note that Sony's peripheral devices are rip-offs of Nintendo's controllers. From the SNES-like design, to the rumble, the control sticks and, most recently, the motion sensor technology and connectivity between consoles and portables, Sony has been accused of being a copycat.
- Even the first Playstation was originally meant to be an SNES peripheral, so it goes back quite a ways.
Microsoft has likewise been getting a lot of this, such as with their version of Nintendo's Miis.
- Microsoft has been fielding similar accusations from Apple's faithful for years, who seem to honestly believe that Apple invented the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers) interface paradigm. For the record, Xerox did it first.
  - This troper saw an analysis in Edge magazine many moons ago which nicknamed Windows 95 as Mac 89.
  - Xerox is the user interface bicycle: Everyone's had a ride.
A new game in development, called Wiki, looks very similar to The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Nintendo was already on Sony's case about it.
- Similarly, many people accused Starfox Adventures of trying to be too much like a Zelda game.
- On the other hand, is anybody really surprised that a game called "Wiki" is building on other developers' work?
Final Fight: Streetwise was accused of trying to cash in on the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Then again, you can't blame them: the market has thousands of titles just about trying to be like San Andreas. If you thought that was bad, check out the quantity of First Person Shooters and war simulation games right now (especially the ones that take place IN SPACE!)
Sonic The Hedgehog's spinoffs are frequently accused of copying from Mario's lineup of spinoffs. Then again, Mario has starred in nearly every genre imaginable.
"Like World Of Warcraft but..." syndrome has begun to really invade MMORPGs, due to said game's amazing economic success. In particular, user interfaces and tutorial zones tend to be described as World Of Warcraft in SPACE or transplanted to other fantasy series (occasionally even other games that came out first). This isn't always a bad thing — World Of Warcraft wouldn't have been successful if it had a bad UI or especially boring early quests — but a lot of reviewers spend two or three days in a new game and advocate sticking with the precursor.
- "It's like WOW" has become a common complaint about Dungeons And Dragons Fourth Edition, despite the fact that many of the alleged WOW elements started in D&D itself.
Name a movie, and the odds are that someone has derided it for elements it shares with another film. For example, the train fight in Batman Begins is accused of being a rip-off of the one in Spiderman 2, and many Disney films are accused of plagiarizing from anime.
- "The climactic duel is so cool! The huge scary badguy in the dark cloak fights our wry, skinny, clever hero to the death inside a giant clock - even without having to fight one another they could get crushed at any moment! To say nothing of the poor young lady heroine..." Now, has this troper just described a scene from The Great Mouse Detective, or The Castle of Cagliostro? (Believe it or not, the Disney version is actually WAY darker)
Do not ever start drawing comparisons between the new James Bond series (starting with Casino Royale) and the Jason Bourne films in front of a large group of Bond fans. Half will agree with you and the other half will unleash the fury.
The movie Beowulf was wrongfully accused of trying to rip off 300 because of the main character's signature phrase "I AM BEOWULF!" is somehow similar to "THIS IS SPARTAA!!!". How that becomes ripoff material is beyond some people. Let's also recall that we have an entire page full of examples of people yelling that way, and that Beowulf was filmed first, anyway.
This troper has a mother who claimed Dragon Wars was somehow trying to cash in on the movie Transformers despite the previews having a lack of Stuff Blowing Up. Transmorphers, on the other hand...
Captain Marvel from Marvel is somehow accused of ripping off Captain Marvel from DC because they have the same name.
- Don't get anyone started on Namor and Aqua Man.
  - Or Hawkeye and Green Arrow.
  - Or Ghost Rider and Spawn.
- The Captain Marvel thing has led to several lawsuits back and forth between DC and Marvel. This is part of the reason that DC's Captain Marvel's comic is called SHAZAM! with the well known unfortunate consequences.
  - Before DC owned the "Shazam!" Captain Marvel, they sucessfully sued Fawcett Publishing on the grounds that they invented the caped Flying Brick. That Cap was a very different character beyond that didn't occur to them until they owned him, and suddenly realised there was room for both Big Blue and Big Red in the same universe.
  - Back in the early 40s, the idea of a superhero in general was still quite new. It was only becoming a recognized genre, and so what are now genre tropes were seen as specific characteristics of Superman.
  - Perhaps, but it was in the 40s that DC introduced Aquaman, who was basically a prettier Sub Mariner. They were lucky that Timely (later renamed Marvel) weren't as quick with the lawyers.
Despite good reception overrall, The Incredibles was scoffed at for being somewhat of a ripoff of the Fantastic Four (rather than as it was clearly intended, an affectionate pastiche), considering 3 of the family members have the same powers save for Dash.
- Cars also received some mild bashing for being Doc Hollywood with automobiles! - not enough to dent Pixar's track record, though.
A lot of people figured The One was just a rip off of The Matrix, only with Jet Li and more bullet time sequences. Considering that it came out practically soon after the first Matrix film and uses many of the same conventions, it was bound to be met with a little negativity.
- While we're on the subject, anything remotely resembling "Bullet Time" after The Matrix.
  - Even though Max Payne, which also used "bullet time", was in development before The Matrix came out.
  - In the DVD commentary for Blade it's pointed out (tongue-in-cheek) that they used a Bullet Time scene first, so these should be regarded as Blade rip-offs.
Despite parody movies having been done back in the dawn of cinematic history, a lot of the newer ones are long forgotten for trying to cash in on Scary Movie. Then again, Scary Movie did repopularize parody movies...
The movie Cool World by Ralph Bakshi, had been riddled with bad reviews for mainly trying to copy Who Framed Roger Rabbit because it used the same real-world/cartoon integration special effects.
Don't ever do reviews on You Tube, unless you want to be labeled an AVGN ripoff.
- And there are videos on You Tube calling the AVGN a Seanbaby ripoff.
Friends is constantly being accused of being a Seinfeld ripoff. However, anyone who actually follows both shows realizes that they have very different styles of humor.
- On a related note, Living Single is widely considered to be a Friends ripoff, despite the fact that the former premiered before the latter.
- And so is Coupling pretty much just because it has six leads, divided perfectly by gender.
  - And a Local Hangout where they sit on the only sofa! The only way it could be any more of a ripoff would be if, er, there was the slightest similarity in characterisation or humour...
And let us not forget that every adult animated series after 1990 copied The Simpsons. Never mind that there would be no Simpsons without a little show called The Flintstones.
- Nor would there be Flintstones without The Honeymooners.
  - A fact lampshaded on The Simpsons when in court deciding who owned the rights to Itchy and Scratchy—Roger Meyers pointed out shows that owed there existence to earlier shows, naming The Flintstones and The Honeymooners, then asking the judge "If you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they going to come from?"
The movie Zathura had been scoffed at largely as a Jumanji ripoff.
- Presumably then, the people who think this didn't know both films were based on books written by the same person, and then in the Zathura novel the Zathura game was found in the same box as the Jumanji game.
  - Which means that this is also Recycled In Space...
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead had the misfortune of being released a month after Cloverfield.
- And even more on top of that was that it came out after O REC (The O stands for DOT on a handheld film camera), the Spanish original version of the Quarrantine.
- And all three had the misfortune of being released nine years after box-office hit The Blair Witch Project. Although Cannibal Holocaust did it first.
Real life example: Romans liked to copy Greek art, often making perfect replicas in marble. Among artistic communities, it's often thought that this copying made the Romans less worthy, artistically speaking. Of course, even today with complicated techniques and high-tech tools, it's very hard to make an exact copy.
- Which says something about the pretentiousness of the art world.
- Or that good talent shouldn’t be wasted on rehashing old stuff.
Strike Witches is generally seen as a copy of Sky Girls, but with Fanservice turned up a few notches, leading to its Fan Nickname of "Sky Girls no pantsu". This is a moot point, given that both are the brainchild of Shimada Humikane. By the way, have you seen those funky girl-machine hybrids dubbed Mecha Musume floating around imageboards before SG and/or SW premiered? Yeah, those were Humikane's original creation too, and they appeared first, and trademarked. Not to mention the Busou Shinki line of toys he premiered.
- And Mecha Musume is just Humikane's brand. Mecha Shoujo was around quite a while before that.
Done to Hell and back with Shoot Em Ups. "It's the same shit from [insert any year between 1978 and 1989] years ago, so it sucks." Never mind that comparing Space Invaders to a Bullet Hell game like Touhou would be like comparing an Integra to a Viper.
Initial D Arcade Stage fans like to do this to Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune.
Extremely prevalent in music fandom/journalism. How many times have you heard "______ is just doing the same thing The Beatles did in the '60s"?
- Speaking of The Beatles, it would take no less than a miracle of God to get critics not to use this argument against Sean Lennon or any other musician related to a Beatle.
  - Jakob Dylan has the same problem.
  - Hilariously lampshaded in this video
During the development of Quake II and Unreal, members of id and Epic's teams would often sling mud at eachother in their public .plan files, which reached the point of one of Unreal's staff members openly accusing the team at id of stealing ideas from Unreal. His justification? "Unreal has a bald guy and a girl with a ponytail. Quake II has a bald guy and a girl with a ponytail."
Many Abridged series are dismissed just for copying Little Kuriboh, regardless of whether they have different jokes or even parody the series differently. This can come off as a bit hypocrital, given Kuriboh's own heavy reliance on pop culture references.
- Naruto Abriged made fun of this.
You're copying Little Kuriboh! He said the word "the", and you so said it in your last episode!
- Since The Abridged Genre runs on Follow The Leader, this was inevitable...
- Aaaaaand Little Kuriboh just put a Take That in his last episode, where he implied the Naruto Abridged had a dead fanbase. Complete with rimshot.
Yugi: "They had a Fanbase?"
Yami: "Touche."
There are people who watch Saturday Night Live who seem completely incapable of enjoying any sketch that has a premise that's even remotely similar to another sketch from a previous season. Since it's now in its 34th season, this means there aren't very many sketches they can enjoy.
If you are an aspiring female singer-songwriter, don't bother. You will be called a ripoff of Joni Mitchell/Kate Bush/Tori Amos/Regina Spektor/Alanis Morissette/etc. Sometimes, all of them at once.
Any Nu or Alt. Metal bands will invariably be labeled as really bad Alice in Chains/Rage Against The Machine/Mr. Bungle ripoffs. This isn't exactly unwarranted, however, quite a few are.
- Likewise, every grunge band has been accused at some point or another of copying Nirvana. Even bands like Sonic Youth and The Melvins, who were around before them.
Fans of Rhythm Games are divided over whether In The Groove is this and had it coming for being too Dance Dance Revolution-like or Cloning Gold that shouldn't have had its life cut short.
The movie, Thirteen Going On Thirty, has often been criticized for ripping off on Big - completely disregarding the fact that the former has Time Travel in it, while the latter didn't.
- The Robin Williams movie Jack was accused of ripping off Big as well. This was mostly by people who never saw the actual movie, just the trailers. Big was a comedy, Jack was a freaking Tear Jerker.
There's a rather large controversy on the internet regarding whether or not The Lion King is a rip-off of the classic anime series Kimba The White Lion. Comparisons between the two can be seen here- Yeah, a LOT of similarities, aren't there?
- This was even referenced in The Simpsons in which Mufasa appears in the clouds to Lisa and says-"Kimba...I mean...Simba...avenge me."
- Except for the fact that the actual stories are as different as night and day.
- Not as many as Hamlet and the African Tale Of Sundiata, the former of which probably ripped off the latter (Shakespeare being Shakespeare).
- When you consider that the ending they originally had planned kinda hits the nail home
- Though Osamu Tezuka's actually copied off of Disney's style of animation.
The more rabid fans of Danny Phantom accused the series American Dragon Jake Long of being a rip-off of the former...even though all they had in common was that they are about a Half Human Hybrid with supernatural powers. If that wasn't crazy enough, the American Dragon Jake Long fans then began to accuse The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee of being a rip-off. Ironic, considering that shows/cartoons starring a teen with supernatural powers have been around since at least the 1960s.
When Firefly first showed up, word among anime fans was that it was a Live Action Rip-Off of Outlaw Star, primarily due to the 'naked girl in the box in the first episode' and the Cool Ship. The two shows turned out to be very different, not in the least because Outlaw Star had 26 episodes and Firefly had 13 (and a movie).
There have been accusations of Tiki Towers being a ripoff of World Of Goo, despite using slightly different gameplay mechanics.
Xenogears: Red head heroine, Giant robots and religious tones: "This is an Evangelion rip-off", said some uninformed fans of the anime. The usual answer they get is "Xenogears is very different: the story actually makes sense".
- Eva makes sense too...allegedly, if you read the supplementary materials in the Japan-only games.
TNA has been mocked as "WWE Lite" due to its occasional gimmicks and storylines similar to those used by "that promotion up north."
Fans of JRPGs constantly say that FPSes are a ripoff of games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, and likewise fans of FPSes and "Sandbox games" say the same about JRPGs. Despite that obviously neither of them have played anymore than the actual ripoffs or games trying to be "Traditional".
- Whenever a game with a few similarities to Grand Theft Auto is released, it is automatically compared to GTA or even considered a GTA rip off.
- Western RPGs and MMORPGs have somehow managed to escape being flagged as a ripoff of Dungeons and Dragons.
  - Many times, it's because they actually license Dungeons and Dragons and implement the rule set - you can't rip off your own license, can you?
- Most MMOFPSes have somehow managed to escape being widely compared to other games with similar goals or even Counter-Strike.
Squirrel Boy gets this, as the haters blame Rodney and Andy for copping... Mac and Bloo.
Watching the first few episodes of GunxSword get it called Trigun but with mechs and compared to many works like it. One review even said that it was ripping off every major show it could, and how it obviously was made to pander to an American audience. Of course true fans of the show will know that it stands very strongly on it's own.
Little Britain is frequently accused of ripping off The League Of Gentlemen and The Fast Show. In turn, The Catherine Tate Show gets flak for copying Little Britain.
For any work of narrative X, somebody somewhere will dismiss X as a ripoff of some Shakespeare play. Or some lost Greco-roman Epic...
Some people are bashing TMNT: Smash Up, because it has the Super Smash Bros. engine, panning it because they think it will be Super Smash Bros. with Turtles, but the gameplay is showing that there are some differences, namely that there are health meters rather then stock damage, the enviroments change consistently, and guard breaks are different, and the people developing the game in question? The team who MADE Super Smash Bros., as well as Team Ninja, so they're really bashing themselves.
I'm not sure if there was any back then, but I'm pretty sure Duck Tales or Darkwing Duck may have been labeled Megaman ripoffs because of similar engines (Okay, Darkwing Duck used the Mega Man 5 engine, but still), Ducktales had it's own original gameplay though, your weapon didn't shoot plasma at the opponent, you had to use Scrooge's cane as a weapon, pogo stick (not making that up), and to trigger things, Darkwing Duck works a little more similar to Megaman, so it's slightly more justified, the only difference? You can grab a hold of something to get higher in the stage.
- And you know what's more interesting? Duck Tales is one of the few liscensed games to have a piece of memorable music, The Moon, it's recognized as one of the best NES music pieces out there, even making it to number 6 on Game Trailers Top 10 Video Game Theme Songs.