Suspiciously Similar Song / Film

Is it just me or does "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman" from Frozen sound suspiciously like "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" from Yentl? [singing] Papa, can you hear me? [normal voice] And nobody fucking realizes it.

— Wade Wilson, discussing this trope in Deadpool 2

A–F

• Alvin and the Chipmunks: Dave's demo song is suspiciously similar to Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark".
• "Creature De La Nuit" from An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster sounds incredibly similar to Be Prepared.
• Anastasia:
  • "Journey to the Past" sounds like "Changing Keys", the long-time theme to Wheel of Fortune.
  • "Once Upon a December" is similar to "Come Little Children" from Hocus Pocus.
  • Rasputin's Villain Song, "In the Dark of the Night", strikingly resembles Jafar's reprise of "Prince Ali" from Aladdin, as well as "At The End of the Day" from Les Misérables.
  • "Learn to Do It" resembles "We Need a Little Christmas" from Mame.
• Angels Revenge features a triumphant melody that's not "Also sprach Zarathustra".
  • And later on, the Background Music sounds suspiciously like the Charlie's Angels theme...
• Anna and the Apocalypse: The underscore song "Christmas Means Nothing Without You" sounds more than a little like Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You".
• Listen during the liftoff in Apollo 13—-don't you think it sounds a little too similar to Art Garfunkel's "All I Know"?
• "Coming" from the 1980 acid trip musical The Apple sounds damn near-identical to Donna Summer's "Wasted" (four years prior).
• The Gabble Sisters' theme from The Aristocats is a simulated version of Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk".
• The chorus of IMALU's "Uh Uh", the theme song for the Japanese version of Arthur and the Invisibles, sounds very similar to the chorus of Hey Monday's "How You Love Me Now".
• The documentary Atari: Game Over uses a slightly off instrumental version of Huey Lewis and the News'
• Baby Geniuses: Heard in the film's trailers & DVD's Bonus Features. There is a song called "Baby on the Run" which is an obvious parody of Iggy Pop's "Real Wild Child".
• Back to the Future: "The Power of Love" for a sequence where Ernest Cline picks up his Delorean from George R. R. Martin. It's a little jarring because moments earlier, an actual snippet of the Game of Thrones theme is heard.
• Batman & Robin: The song "The Ball", which plays during Poison Ivy's introduction to the public at the titular ball, was deliberately based on the song "Poison Ivy" by the Coasters.
• Battleship: One part of the soundtrack is near-identical to the bassline from "Hey Bulldog".
• Bibi Blocksberg: The second film's theme sounds suspiciously similar to "Hedwig's Theme".
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: When the duo play Poker against Billy the Kid, the music is a very unsubtle rip-off of 'Il Triello' from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Similarly, the song "In Time" from the soundtrack sounds ''very'' similar to "With or Without You" by U2.
• The theme from Kinji Fukasaku's Blackmail Is My Life, which appears throughout the film, is a wordless soundalike of "Over Under Sideways Down" by the Yardbirds.
  • The trumpet and guitar fanfare from Battles Without Honor and Humanity sounds thematically like Nino Rota's famous theme from The Godfather.
• The refrain of Blazing Saddles is clearly based on the refrain to the hymn "Yes, Jesus Loves Me".
• The killer's leitmotif in Bloody Moon is very similar to Paul McCartney & Wings's "Live and Let Die''.
• Blue Velvet: "Mysteries of Love" was commissioned specifically to be a suspiciously similar song to This Mortal Coil's version of "Song to the Siren". It became a Breakaway Pop Hit and launched the career of singer Julee Cruise.
• "Barking At The Moon" from Bolt sounds similar to "When The Night Feels My Song" by Bedouin Soundclash.
• The main theme of Braveheart takes inspiration from the "Thaxted" portion of the Jupiter Movement of Gustav Holst's The Planets suite.
• Casablanca: The original script called for the two dueling anthems to be La Marsaillaise, the French National Anthem, and Das Horst-Wessel Lied, the official anthem of the Nazi Party, and the second part of the National Anthem of Germany after the Deutschlandlied / Deutschland Ueber Alles. However, Warner Bros. intervened, pointing out that Horst Wessel was at the time under the copyright of the Nazi Party. If the film were only being screened in Allied nations, it would not have been an issue (as the Allies weren't interested in upholding the IP of a nation that was doing its best to destroy them), but as the film was also going to be distributed in neutral nations, where Germany could cause legal headaches for Warner, they asked that the song not be used. In the film as finished, they used the similar in theme and sound Die Wacht Am Rhein, a 19th century song (which, for obvious reasons, had nothing to do with the Nazis).
• "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" from Cats Don't Dance sounds incredibly similar to "Do Your Thing" by Basement Jaxx.
  • "Tell Me Lies" sounds similar to "At Last" by Etta James.
• "One Little Slip" from Chicken Little sounds incredibly similar to "Who Says You Can't Go Home?" by Bon Jovi.
• "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo" from Cinderella is quite similar to the Scottish folk song "The Wee Cooper of Fife".
• The main theme from The Core is "Mars, the Bringer of War" from Gustav Holst's The Planets recomposed in a different metre.
• John Dunbar's theme in Dances with Wolves sounds like "Taps" (the music played when a soldier dies) fed through a classical orchestra.
• Deep Blue Sea includes a suspiciously similar version of Madonna's "La Isla Bonita".
• "Rotten to the Core" from Descendants has a beat reminiscent of Britney Spears' "Work Bitch", especially during the chorus.
• The theme music in the opening of Diary of a Wimpy Kid sounds similar to "Linus and Lucy" (the Boot Strapped Theme of the Peanuts specials) but in a different tempo.
• The Dreamgirls Movie Bonus Song "Love You I Do" sounds highly similar to "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" by Natalie Cole.
• Dune: David Lynch wanted the scenes set on Caladan to be scored with ambient string music based on the first movement of Dmitri Shostakovich's "11th Symphony".
• The original version of French Canadian film Elvis Gratton used many songs by Elvis Presley. It has been replaced by instrumental Suspiciously Similar Songs.
• In Emmanuelle, the "Rape Scene" music borrows heavily from "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part Two" by King Crimson, while "Emmanuelle Theme (Instrumental - Variation)" sounds like a gentler variation of the song's guitar solo. In addition, "Cigarette Act" is a blatant instrumental knock-off of "Je t'aime moi non plus" by Serge Gainsbourg. Funnily enough, Gainsbourg would later compose the music for Goodbye Emmanuelle.
• The fight theme from the unreleased The Fantastic Four by Eric and David Wurst is basically John Williams' "Here They Come" from A New Hope. While the theme song is more or less shades of "the Main Theme" from Jurassic Park.
• In The First Christmas, a lesser-known stop-motion Christmas special from Rankin/Bass Productions featuring the voice of Angela Lansbury, the song "Save a Little Christmas" sounds quite a bit like "We Need a Little Christmas," famously sung by Lansbury in Mame. Though ironically, the lyrics of the two songs are opposite: "We Need a Little Christmas" calls for celebrating Christmas early, while "Save a Little Christmas" advocates not starting the celebrations too early or else Christmas Day won't be special.
• The opening credits to Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare features music that sounds very similar to ''Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky. Almost to the point, that you'd swear it actually was "Night on Bald Mountain".
• There's some debate as to whether "Let It Go" from Frozen is most similar to "Defying Gravity" or "No Good Deed", both from Wicked (also starring Idina Menzel, who was the original Elphaba).
  • "Return to Arendelle" has a motif that sounds like Danny Elfman's Batman (1989) theme.
  • The sung Recurring Riff in Frozen II that notably appears throughout "Into the Unknown" sounds similar to part of Usher's "More". This guy noticed, and mashed up both songs accordingly.
    • "Lost in the Woods", sounds like "If Only Tears Could Bring You Back" by Midnight Sons, one of the end credits songs to Pokémon: The First Movie.

G–N

• The end credits to the short film George Lucas in Love (a pastiche of Shakespeare in Love) has a suspicious similarity to the Star Wars theme.
• Ghost World: Doug blares some heavy metal on his car stereo - it sounds a lot like an instrumental knockoff of Metallica's "Master of Puppets".
• The Ghostbusters theme was suspiciously similar to "I Want a New Drug" by Huey Lewis and the News, and Lewis actually sued Ray Parker Jr. over it.
  • The same riff was first used in "Pop Muzik" by the band M.
  • Another Ghostbusters example would be the main theme for Filmation's Ghostbusters, which in was was based on Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King".
• Gone with the Wind: At a restaurant Scarlett and Rhett visit on their honeymoon, there's something resembling Offenbach's "Galop Infernal" (or "The Cancan Song"). Assuming it was public domain even back when it was filmed.
  • "Tara's Theme" also sounds a tad like Debussy's "Clair de Lune".
• The Goonies: The prison escape theme is rehashed almost verbatim in On Our Own (when the kids escape from the orphanage).
• The chorus of "Come Alive" from The Greatest Showman very heavily resembles that from Living in a Box's "Blow the House Down".
  • Speaking of The Greatest Showman, "Unbreakable" from UglyDolls is melodically similar to "This Is Me".
  • "The Greatest Show" and "Despacito" align strangely well. No, really.
• The main theme to Grumpy Old Men has an uncanny resemblence to that of Father of the Bride. Of course, perhaps not so uncanny given both are written by Alan Silvestri...
• Hard Rain: The theme is suspiciously similar to that of the TV series 24 (here).
• Alexandre Desplat's "Godric's Hollow Graveyard" (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1) has motifs in the middle that sound ridiculously similar to Alan Silvestri's "Porch" (Avengers: Infinity War).
• Something resembling Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever?" shows up in Highlander II: The Quickening.
  • Considering that Queen did the soundtrack for the first Highlander, and that "Who Wants to Live Forever?" was in the soundtrack, it's not surprising. They sort of "own" this song.
• Home Alone: "Holiday Flight" resembles the Russian Dance from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.
• Rights issues prevented Darlene Love's 1963 recording of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" from being used in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, so producers got Love in to perform a newly-written but suspiciously similar song "All Alone on Christmas" instead.
• Hoodwinked!: The end credits song "Critters Have Feelings" is a clear homage to The Cars' "Just What I Needed", right down to using the same iconic synth voice for the instrumental solo.
• In the Heat of the Night has a scene where a character dances to a novelty-ish tune called "Fowl Owl on the Prowl", which sounds more than a little like Sam the Sham's '60s hit "Li'l Red Riding Hood". This was no accident, as the filmmakers actually wanted to use the latter song but couldn't get the licensing.
• Brad Bird originally wanted John Barry to score The Incredibles, used Barry's theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service in the teaser trailer, and used the Propellerheads remix in the actual trailer. When Michael Giacchino was hired after Barry turned out to be unavailable, the opening fanfare for the theme he wrote closely resembles the On Her Majesty's Secret Service theme.
• The main theme to Independence Day sounds similar to Germany's national anthem, the Deutschlandlied.
• The James Bond theme is actually similar to an unused song composer Monty Norman wrote for a musical.
• The famous Jaws theme is actually very similar to the beginning of the fourth movement of Dvorak's "New World Symphony". The two sound completely different after the first few notes, however.
• John Travolto... da un Insolito Destino (The Face with Two Left Feet) is a parody/exploitation disco film set (and shot) during the Saturday Night Fever era about a John Travolta lookalike. Most of the score sounds like some other disco hits of the time. Halfway through this clip, you can hear that "it sounds like Staying Alive from The Bee Gees but it's not" music.
• The Jungle Book 2: "Jungle Rhythm" sounds a lot like "Sing, Sing, Sing", whose songwriter, Louis Prima, was the original voice of King Louie.
• The entire "Sunny Road to Salina" by Christophe (composed for Road to Salina and recently popularized by Kill Bill Vol. 2) sounds like a remastered, slowed and expanded guitar theme from "Third Stone from the Sun" by Jimi Hendrix. The latter song was highly influential in its time.
• Jerry Goldsmith's theme for King Solomon's Mines is suspiciously similar to John Williams' Raiders of the Lost Ark theme.
• Kung Fury:
  • "True Survivor" is suspiciously similar to "Scarface (Push It to the Limit)" from Scarface.
  • "Redlining Sixth", by Betamaxx, is similar to "Redline" by Rosso Corsa labelmate Lazerhawk.
  • "Careful Shouting", by Highway Superstar, is an obvious homage to "Careless Whisper" by George Michael.
  • "Barbarianna" resembles the first third of "Ride the Lightning" by Metallica.
  • The aptly named "Terminathor", heard when Thor is summoned, is based on the Terminator theme.
• La La Land: "Herman's Habit" sounds reminiscent to "Gin & Tonic & Red Red Roses" from Katamari Damacy.
• The Lawnmower Man: The end theme is only a couple notes off from being the Terminator theme.
• The song that opens Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is clearly meant to harken back to Bambi that accompanies the return of spring. Bonus points for also being a source of Mood Whiplash, just like the song it's based on.
• The Lion King (1994): "I Just Can't Wait to be King" is melodically similar to Dolly Parton's "9 to 5".
• Little Shop of Horrors: The main melody of "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space" is similar to the intro of "Right Place Wrong Time" by Dr. John.
• Soundtrack version with Madame Web (2024). Fans were quick to find out that the main them of the movie is strangely similar to the main theme of Insomniac's Spider-Man video game. Whether this was intentional or just temporary music that they forgot to replace is up to the listener.
• The Mask: The trailer uses a Suspiciously Similar Song to the Danny Elfman composition "Breakfast Machine" from Pee-wee's Big Adventure.
• Maverick: When Mel Gibson pulls down Danny Glover's mask, a guitar theme that sounds suspiciously like the Lethal Weapon theme plays.
  • Also related to Lethal Weapon: in Passenger 57 the Ferris Wheel theme sounds similar to the Hollywood Blvd Chase theme. Surprisingly, Warner Bros. produced both films.
• The Will Smith song for Men in Black was clearly inspired by the Patrice Rushen song "Forget Me Nots".
• A home-video trailer for the second Mighty Ducks film uses a painfully obvious Suspiciously Similar Song to the theme from Back to the Future.
• Some of the music from Monsters, Inc. are similar songs to "Sing, Sing, Sing".
• Mortal Kombat: The Movie: The theme sounds suspiciously like 2 Unlimited's "Twilight Zone". Of course, they're the same orchestra hit stadium techno style so there's bound to be resemblance.
• Morozko (released in the US as Jack Frost): When Father Frost returns home to find Nastenka under the effects of his magic staff, the music is similar to the intro to "Cursed Sanctuary" from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
• The Muppets: This trailer — which parodies a The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) trailer — lampshades this, with intertitles that read:
  We couldn't / get the rights / to the real / song / so we had / some dude / write / this one / but we / had to / put him / in the / movie. / Here he is. / (shot of crowd scene with one person in the background circled) Totally/ Worth It
  • Additionally, "Life's a Happy Song" sounds a bit like The Beatles' "Getting Better".
• The opening drum riff from "Equestria Girls (Cafeteria Song)" from My Little Pony: Equestria Girls sounds similar to the opening to Queen's "We Will Rock You" and the chorus resembles the chorus of "Stacy's Mom" by Fountains of Wayne. This is demonstrated here..
  • The chorus of said song is similar to Kesha's "Tik Tok".
  • "Better Than Ever" from the sequel resembles "We're All in This Together" from High School Musical.
  • The supplemental song "Friendship Through the Ages", especially the intro, is similar to "Let it Go" from Frozen.
  • The verse melody of "Unleash the Magic" from Friendship Games is copied all but verbatim from The Little Mermaid's "Poor Unfortunate Souls", and the bridge chant is suspiciously similar to the second boss theme from Child of Light. Many have also noticed that the song, especially towards the end, sounds a lot like "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago.
  • "Invisible", Wallflower Blush's Villain Song from Forgotten Friendship, resembles "Critical" by Eiffel 65.
• The two 5 note phrases that open National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets are copied directly from Luke and Leia's theme from Return of the Jedi.
• The Natural: The theme is similar to Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man".

O–Z

• Orgazmo: The opening song, "Now You're a Man", has elements of "You Give Love a Bad Name" by Bon Jovi, a number of Ronnie James Dio songs, and "Eye of the Tiger".
• The main theme leitmotif of Pacific Rim sounds a lot like the main theme (starts around 1:10) of Crysis 2.
• The opening song to The Pest has a bassline reminiscent of "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugar Hill Gang.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: The "Parlay" music sounded very much like Ennio Morricone's Harmonica music. In fact, it was intentionally used to "give an air of the end of an era".
  • Also, "At Wit's End" stinger sounds like Van Helsing's "Reunited".
  • The series itself is a frequent target of this. Chances are, if you come across a royalty-free pirate-themed music track, it's going to sound suspiciously like Hans Zimmer's work.
• "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas sounds a lot like the 2nd movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony, which was itself composed to sound like Native American music. Coincidence? Probably not.
• The titular train theme in The Polar Express sounds similar to the Tiny Toon Adventures theme.
• Prom Night was originally supposed to utilize popular disco songs of the era, but they were far too expensive for the low-budget film. Producer Peter Simpson asked composer Paul Zaza to compose songs that sounded similar to the disco songs. When asked how close he wanted them, Simpson said "Close enough so that they will sue us, but not close enough for them to win." Sure enough, he was indeed sued by at least one record label, but settled out of court. The most obvious is "Love Me 'Til I Die", which sounds very close to "I Will Survive".
• Psych-Out: A song, ostensibly by Stoney's Fake Band, Mumblin' Jim, is heard repeatedly on the soundtrack - though it's credited as "Ashbury Wednesday" by Boenzee Cryque, it's basically an off-key, instrumental cover of "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix.
• The rape/seduction scene in Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon is set to music that sounds suspiciously like Ravel's Bolero. The composer claimed to want to create something more original (and more appropriately Japanese) but Kurosawa kept pushing him back towards Bolero.
• Re-Animator: The theme is very similar to that from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
• "Hoochie-Coochie Man" from Road House (1989) is rather blatantly "Bad to the Bone".
• The titular song from "Rock-A-Doodle" is eerily similar to "Getting Lucky" from "The Chipmunk Adventure".
• Averted in The Room (2003), in which Tommy Wiseau shelled out the money for the rights to Happy Birthday to You!.
• "I'll Never Do It On A Christmas Tree" from Rover Dangerfield sounds similar to "Ev'rybody's Got A Laughing Place" from Song of the South.
• The Santa Clause: "Let's Go" sounds remarkably (and ironically) similar to the overture from Felix Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream.
• Scrooge: "Thank You Very Much" sounds similar to "A Bushel and a Peck" from Guys and Dolls.
• Shrek:
  • The leitmotif of "Fairytale" sure sounds a lot like that of "Fire Treasure" and its variations from Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. Specifically, "Variation 3"; it even plays when Lupin rescues a princess locked in a tower.
  • Appropriately, the Fairy Godmother's song in Shrek 2 is very similar to both "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo" from Cinderella (1950) and "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast.
• "Faith" from Sing sounds very similar to Pharrell Williams' "Happy" from another Illumination Entertainment film, Despicable Me 2, as well as the KARA song "Wanna".
• Singin' in the Rain: "Make 'Em Laugh" bears more than a small resemblance to Cole Porter's "Be a Clown", which had appeared a few years earlier in MGM's The Pirate.
• The theme of Skyfall bears resemblance to "Aquatic Ambience" from Donkey Kong Country.
• Maurice Jarre's score in the final scene of Solar Crisis is suspiciously similar to "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.
• "Laughing Place" from Song of the South and Splash Mountain is similar to the minstrel folk song "Jimmy Crack Corn (Blue Tail Fly)".
• Certain pieces of music from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) relating to the character Knuckles (for example, this and this) use basically the same motif as the main theme from the MCU Spider-Man Trilogy.
• Spaceballs more or less did this with the Star Wars theme. Kind of a given as it's a parody.
  • The Leitmotif for the Desert Moon of Vega is essentially a loose impression of the main theme from Lawrence of Arabia.
• The main theme from the Spider-Man trilogy sounds similar to Debussy's "Clair De Lune"
• Leonard Rosenmann reused his leitmotif for the Fellowship from Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings as the bridge for the main theme of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
• Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation: The theme was similar to Backdraft's Fighting Seventeenth...
• "Follow You" the main theme from Strays (2023), sounds incredibly similar to "Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard" by Paul Simon.
• The main theme from Superman: The Movie sounds a lot like the 40s era Universal fanfare
• "This Is My Idea" from The Swan Princess has sounds rather similar to "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast. Bobsheaux is quick to lampshade this in his review of the film.
• Take the Money and Run: Woody Allen's 1969 comedy has an escape scene accompanied by a knockoff of Quincy Jones' "Soul Bossa Nova".
• It's pretty blatant that "I See the Light" from Tangled was based on "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. Both songs even include the line "It's crystal clear" with practically the same notation.
• The music that they're trying to pass off as not-Shaft from Tank Girl.
• "Derka Derka" from Team America: World Police is an intentional Jimmy Hart-ing of the Mos Eisley Cantina music from A New Hope.
• The Terminator: The chorus of Tahnee Cain & The Tryanglz' "Burning in the Third Degree" is similar to "I'm So Excited" by The Pointer Sisters.
• "Let Me Be Your Wings" from Don Bluth's Thumbelina is actually a simulated version of "A Whole New World" from Aladdin.
• The recurring melody from 0:26 in "Jessie's in Trouble" from Toy Story 2 sounds like the beginning of "Carnival Overture" by Antonín Dvorák.
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon: "It's Our Fight" sounds a lot like "Mind Heist" from the Inception trailer. Zack Hemsey, composer of "Mind Heist", even called attention to it on his blog.
• The theme to 12 Monkeys is heavily based on Ástor Piazzolla's Suite Punta del Este I. Introduccion: Allegro pesante. While it starts off on similar notes it diverges at several points.
• Alex North's original score for 2001: A Space Odyssey opened with a resemblance to "Also sprach Zarathustra", which was eventually used in the final version instead.
• UHF: The original teaser trailer, meant to parody the Indiana Jones franchise, used an intentionally-obvious knock-off of the theme.
• WarGames: The opening credits music is a slightly tweaked version of the overture to Georges Bizet's opera Carmen.
• Wayne's World: The "Stairway to Heaven" scene uses a substitute in the home video version, due to rights issues. The original theatrical release (and later on, the 4K Blu-ray release) used the actual intro.
• Where the Buffalo Roam: Somewhat averted in the DVD release, as the new songs don't sound anything like the ones used in the original release. Still pretty lame, though.
• Will Smith's theme song to Wild Wild West sounds similar to Stevie Wonder's "I Wish".
  • Not only was it directly sampled, but Wonder appears in the music video as well.
• Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet has "O Verona", which is also suspiciously similar to "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana.
• Winnie the Pooh: Zooey Deschanel's "So Long" bears quite a number of similarities to "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), even beyond their names. This may be a singer allusion as Deschanel played Trillian in that film.
• As part of its And You Were There sequence, loose The Wonderful Wizard of Oz adaptation The Witches of Oz features a street musician (the wizard himself) playing a clarinet tune that's just similar enough to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to be recognizable.
• The electric cello from "Wonder Woman's Theme" from the DC Extended Universe sounds like the Metal Scream of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song".
• The cultists performing a human sacrifice in Young Sherlock Holmes (not to be confused with the other Sherlock Holmes with cultists performing a human sacrifice) chant a song which once again rips off "O Fortuna".
• Z: When Vago ducks into a cafe to avoid the police, the score is a piece of rock music that sounds a lot like the The Rolling Stones' "Get Off of My Cloud".
• The "Dancing with Gazelle" app theme from Zootopia contains a synth loop identical to one used in the Phobos Battalion theme from Pokémon Trozei!.
• The song "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing" in Disneyland/Disney World's Enchanted Tiki Room is suspiciously similar to Offenbach's "Barcarolle" from The Tales of Hoffmann (also called "Belle Nuit" from Les Comtes d'Hoffmann).

Creators

• Dingo Pictures:
  • The "Electronica" music cue from Dinosaur Adventure, Balto and several other Dingo films is similar to "Machine Gun" by German synthpop band Hubert Kah, with hints of the Miami Vice theme.
  • "Funky Bass" is an especially blatant ripoff of the Peter Gunn theme.
  • The opening song of Aladin is similar to the late '30s novelty song "The Girl Friend of the Whirling Dervish".
• James Horner was known for reusing cues in his different scores, nearly to the point of self-plagiarism.
  • His four-note "danger motif" is in EVERYTHING, including Willow (here, starting at 0:34), Enemy at the Gates (here, 0:32), Troy (here), Avatar (here, 5:24), and The Wrath of Khan (here, 1:10), but it isn't even something he came up with! It originated from Sergei Rachmaninoff's first symphony.
  • Several parts of Stealing the Enterprise, Battle in the Mutura Nebula and Genesis Countdown in Star Trek II and Star Trek III was later reused in his own score for the The Rocketeer and parts of the score was reused in Walt Disney World's Fountain of Nations in Epcot.
  • Titanic: Several places in the soundtrack, such as at 0:50 of Southampton, and the entire soundtrack of composer Joel McNeely's Iron Will is suspiciously similar to Stephen Foster's classic "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair".
• Alan Menken:
  • Beauty and the Beast:
    • The Prologue/curse Leitmotif is based on "Aquarium" from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals. Ironically, Golden Films used the original "Aquarium" as well as "Fossils" in their 1992 Mockbuster.
    • "Be Our Guest" resembles the titular song from Me and My Girl, and the Screen-to-Stage Adaptation version has an interlude similar to Jacques Offenbach's "Can Can". It also reuses elements of "Les Poissons" from The Little Mermaid, which also incorporated The Can Can Song.
    • The titular theme also sounds like "Groovy Kind of Love" played by a classical orchestra.
    • "The Mob Song" further sounds like a "dark" version of the theme to The Dick van Dyke Show.
  • "God Bless Us, Everyone", the main theme from A Christmas Carol: The Musical, resembles Zelda's theme from The Legend of Zelda franchise, although with a different rhythm. "Christmas Together" sounds like a mix of "Fathoms Below" and "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid.
  • The finish of "Part of That World" in The Little Mermaid ("Out of the sea/Wish I could be/Part of that world") is Ashman and Menken copying one of their own songs, "Somewhere That's Green" from Little Shop of Horrors ("Far from Skid Row/I dream we'll go/Somewhere that's green").
  • "Fathoms Below" is similar to the traditional sea chanty "Bound for the Rio Grande (Away Rio)".
  • "Suppertime" from Little Shop of Horrors sounds like some parts of "Looking for Trade" from Shock Treatment.
    • In addition, a part of the song featured in the first episode of Little Shop, sounds like the "Come on, come on..." part of "Suppertime".
• "The Virginia Company" from Pocahontas sounds similar to the song "Barett's Privateers" by Stan Rogers.
• John Williams:
  • Harry Potter:
    • The first part of "Hedwig's Theme" is similar to Greensleeves.
    • Some notes are also reminiscent of Swan Lake.
    • "Voldemort's Theme" has a similar Recurring Riff to that of the Shadow Temple BGM from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It’s also very similar to Williams’ own “The Emperor’s Theme” from the Star Wars saga.
    • A few notes in "Leaving Hogwarts" sounds nearly identical to the opening notes of "We Are One" from The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.
    • Chamber of Secrets: When Harry tries to avoid the rogue bludger, the score sounds very similar to the Coruscant chase music from Attack of the Clones.
  • The bridge section in the Jurassic Park theme resembles a major-key transposition of "Fugue no. 2" from Book 1 of Bach'a The Well-Tempered Clavier.
    • A similar motif can be heard in "The Vaults of Heaven" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Whistle Down the Wind: "Open up the vaults, open up the vaults, we've got to find the key...."
    • Sesame Street uses the unmodified tune of Fugue no. 2 for the "Monsterpiece Theatre" theme: "ABCDE, EFGHI, HIJKLMN, O-oP...."
  • Star Wars:
    • The famous main title theme combines elements from Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and Tchaikovsky's "Marche Slave".
    • The Imperial March introduced in The Empire Strikes Back is suspiciously similar to Chopin's Funeral March, with elements of Gustav Holst's Mars: Bringer of War movement from The Planets (the metre is changed and the order of the themes is mixed up a bit, but the similarities are fairly striking). People also toss in the 1932 song "My Woman".
    • Especially during the Battle of Yavin, which also interpolates part of Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity during the "X Wings Draw Fire" segment.
    • The Phantom Menace uses a knockoff of the third movement of Dvorak's ninth symphony in the lightsaber battle at the end.
    • The music that plays as the three heroes swim to Otoh Gunga is based heavily on the "aquarium" section of Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals.
    • "Across the Stars", the love theme from Attack of the Clones, is a Shout-Out to Nino Rota's theme from Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.
    • The main motif of the Ewok theme sounds a lot like the March from Prokofiev's "Love for Three Oranges".
    • "The Dune Sea of Tatooine" in A New Hope doesn't even try to hide the fact it's The Rite of Spring. The "Jawa Sandcrawler" cue which follows it has a slightly looser but still distinct resemblance to "Ritual Action of the Ancestors" from the same.
    • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Kevin Kiner's score sounds kind of like this when compared to the films' music.
  • The love theme from Superman: The Movie, "Can You Read My Mind", sounds suspiciously like the Verklarung (Transfiguration) motif from Richard Strauss's tone-poem "Tod und Verklarung" (Death and Transfiguration).
    • Jerry Goldsmith's Supergirl theme intentionally matches the style of Williams' Superman: The Movie main theme.
  • War Horse: "Harold's Theme" sounds a lot like the duck's oboe-driven leitmotif in Peter and the Wolf. This is probably intentional, seeing as Harold is a goose.

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