Let me see if I understand this right, using Superman as an example. If Superman is adapted from the comics to a cartoon as a younger hipper character, thats probably Adaptation Decay (assuming you don't like the younger hipper spin).
If Superman is imitated by an army of flying bricks and then Supes is adapted into a cartoon where he's a flying brick and thats it (i.e. most of his other powers are forgotten aside from the iconic flying strength and invulnerability) that's lost in imitation.
Does that sound right? If so, I think a lot of the examples here are missing the mark and I'm ready to do a purge. A lot of this is still Adaptation Decay.
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Many of the examples are significantly missing the mark (I tried to clean up some of the X-Men ones).
As I understand it, to use your exemple, if Superman is adapted as a "younger, hipper" character, that's Adaptation Decay. If all (or most) subsequent adaptations have superman as "young and hip" because the "young and hip" Superman is more popular or is the only version most people know, to the extent that the average man-on-the-street, if shown a Superman comic book, would wonder why he's not as young and hip as he's "supposed" to be, that's Lost in Imitation.
The classic example would be Frankenstein's Monster, who is intellegent, articulate, and agile in the original novel, but who was universally portrayed as a lumbering brute who said things like "fire bad!" for decades after being portrayed that way on film. (It's now vogue to portray him more like the novel version, but only because it allows the producers to brag that their version is "more accurate.")
Edited by LoserTakesAll
Would the Mona Lisa count as this trope? According to x-rays, the famous smile, let alone most of the image, wasn't actually painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. What Da Vinci painted had eye-brows, for example. The Mona Lisa as everybody now knows it was painted by some nameless restorer, directly over the fading paint of the previous restorer. The painting is at least four layers of finished paintings thick.