Truer to the Text

1984: Simple and blocky.
2007: Complex and more organic.
2018: Simple and blocky again.

If a book or comic becomes sufficiently popular, it will almost definitely get a TV show or a movie. While some fans rejoice upon hearing that their favorite series is getting an adaptation, all too often a contingent of the fanbase will find themselves miffed about changes to the work that the general public might not care too much about, and consider that a part of what made the original great is missing. The problems are especially likely to surface when the story is ongoing and the staff has to work with incomplete source material. The usual result of such circumstances is a Broken Base.

It's important to keep in mind that changes from the source materials have often been a good thing, and sometimes very necessary. After all, what works well in one specific medium doesn't always necessarily translate very well into another without significant changes to accomodate the differences. Sometimes being more faithful is a technicality rather than anything significant and, if done badly, will displease those who wonder why the new adaptation was made in the first place if it wasn't going to do anything new.

The cycle of adaptations from earlier work usually follows a certain model:

• A series' first adaptation is geared towards introducing the work to the widest possible audience. It will begin with the same basic plot but will try to adapt and condense it to make the public more involved with a certain character, genre, or setting.
• A new adaptation seeking to revive the IP now has an additional option the first one didn't: go back to the source material and bring in stuff the first version left off especially since the burden of introducing the IP to a general audience has already been achieved.
• In many cases, the adaptation of the source material is far more notable and memorable than the original source. Not all fans of the movie/show actually read the source material, and are more familiar with the various adaptations. Putting on a play called "Don Juan" but not specifying that you are adapting the original Spanish play by Tirso de Molina, rather than the opera by Mozart (Don Giovanni), or the play by Moliere, or the one by George Bernard Shaw, will confuse audiences, who will mostly not be familiar with how many different versions there are.
• Depending on the differences between mediums, such as the inevitable problems that come with adapting a book into a film, "more faithful" does not necessarily equate to "better." Sometimes the original media has had multiple Retools and possibly even a Cosmic Retcon every now and then, making it so that being faithful in one aspect of the original also makes it unfaithful to another aspect of the original. In extreme cases, a more faithful adaptation may only succeed in showing why the first adaptation made changes in the first place; what might work in a novel may not necessarily work in a visual medium, and vice versa.

Sometimes the IP is so valuable that there are many adaptations and inevitably one or more of them, to distinguish itself from the crop, and better market itself, will try and be more faithful to the original adaptation. This adaptation will go out of its way to cover what they missed out on last time and fill itself with more Continuity Porn. There will be no annoying additions, no alternate endings, no important details ignored, just the original story, pure and proper. If done well, the fandom will probably be quite pleased. Or, alternatively, it's closer to the original story far more than other adaptations have been. Some IP are truer to the text in relative comparisons to other adaptations of the same material, but even then it will likely choose what to emphasize and highlight, and other takes might well do their own versions.

If a previous less faithful adaptation has been especially impactful, a "Truer to the Text" later adaptation may have negative reviews due to it lacking elements that actually weren't in the original work.

When using this trope keep in mind that it refers to works that have been adapted multiple times, has to specify what part of the text it is truer to compared to other versions. To qualify, a work need only be truer to the text relative to other adaptations (subjective quality is irrelevant).

See also Reconstruction.

This is a list of examples that have already been done or are in the works. Do NOT list a series unless it has been officially announced. Mere rumors are not enough.

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Examples

Comic Books

• The DCU
• Marvel Universe

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Adapted from Anime

• There's a couple of Digimon in Digimon Ghost Game that were portrayed exactly like their Digimon Reference Book entry suggests. This means certain Digimon like Arukenimon and Lilithmon are portrayed as horrific Serial Killers instead of the comedic relief villains they are in their debut anime series.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion was historically dubbed and subtitled with many Woolseyisms and a few translation errors here and there, with the Rebuild of Evangelion carrying the same type of altered translation style. That changed when Studio Khara noted that the theatrical translation for Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo. received a negative reception from the limited theatrical run. This made Studio Khara hire Dan Kanemitsu to do a more literal translation for the repeatedly-delayed home video release. The home video release's English dub is redone from scratch while having the same cast, and the theatrical subtitles are kept as an alternate option, but the theatrical dub is not included on the disc. Studio Khara would continue working with Dan Kanemitsu for a new retranslation of the original show and movies for the Netflix release, alongside an entirely new cast. The English dub of Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time, along with matching rereleases of the previous Rebuild films for Amazon Prime Video, would also receive similar literal translations that are closer to the Japanese text than the FUNimation translations, while bringing back most of the cast from the pre-Kanemitsu translations. Dan Kanemitsu's translations are controversial among fans thanks to their more literal nature and the fact that the entire cast was replaced for the Netflix release.
• The TPCi dub of Pokémon: The Series (starting with the Battle Frontier seasons) is known for being more faithful to the original Japanese scripts than the one by 4Kids Entertainment, which frequently altered characterization and morals. This is most evident when the series revisits characters or stories from the 4Kids era; Misty keeps her Proud Beauty traits after they were largely removed from the 4Kids dub, and Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution retains the original "Clones Are People, Too" Aesop instead of replacing it with the notoriously broken "fighting is wrong."
• The Super Robot Wars franchise generally inverts this trope when adapting the plots of the anime and/or manga included: an entry's debut game will usually be very faithful, with later appearances taking liberties to keep things fresh. However, if said entry's debut appearance presented a notably compressed or even outright bizarre adaptation, there's a chance a later game will play the trope straight, with one of the most well-known examples of this being Super Robot Wars Z's take on Zambot 3; whereas previous games barely touch on the series' actual plot, Z offers a mostly straight adaptation that maintains the sense of tragedy Zambot was known for.

Adapted from Comic Books

• The 1990s films based on The Addams Family took on the much darker humor and more genuinely malicious and occasionally murderous characterisation of the protagonists from the original newspaper cartoons, compared to the significantly fluffier TV series (in which the family are essentially just Dark Is Not Evil bohemian proto-Goths in a stereotypical white-picket-fence American suburb). Some fans of the TV show found them quite unpleasant. The 2019 animated film is similarly much closer to the visual style of the comic strip; among other things, Gomez is depicted as quite pudgy and homely (unlike the thin and handsome John Astin and Raúl Juliá), Morticia's facial features are noticeably exaggerated, and Wednesday is cartoonishly thin.
• The Blue Beetle started off as Dan Garret, a Science Hero (and, in his first appearance, a Green Hornet knockoff). He was later given a dramatic Retool: Now he was Dan Garrett, archeologist who used a supernatural scarab to fight crime. When he was replaced by Ted Kord, this origin was retained... but Ted went on to not use the scarab at all, and instead be a Science Hero again.
• The Boys: Diabolical has the short "I'm Your Pusher", which is a direct adaptation of a story from the comics (helmed by one of the comic's writers, no less), and as such, is a much straighter adaptation of the comics than the Amazon Prime series based off of it: Billy Butcher doesn't have a beard and is always smirking, Hughie is a Scot instead of an American, Queen Maeve is blonde instead of a redhead, and Jack from Jupiter makes an appearance.
• Dredd is considered much closer in tone to the titular judge's characterization in the original comics than Sylvester Stallone's version. It helps that Karl Urban's Dredd kept his helmet on for the entire film.
• Zigzagged with DuckTales (2017). DuckTales (1987) was loosely inspired by the original American comics written by Carl Barks. While it did adapt a small number of stories from the comics, it lacked a number of elements from said comics: most glaringly, Donald Duck, who played a large role in many of the original stories but was barred from appearing in the show due to Executive Meddling. The 2017 reboot adds a ton of visual references to the works of both Carl Barks and Don Rosa (the show's intro recreates several Carl Barks' illustrations in animation) and name drops or even introduces concepts and characters that had never been introduced in animation, such as Plain Awful and Bombie The Zombie; the show also combines aspects from all other areas of the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, the video games, and even a number of The Disney Afternoon shows into an Ultimate Universe. On the other hand, the 2017 reboot's tone leans more on self-aware comedy than straight adventure and the characterizations differ a lot from the characters' comic book counterparts, and even the episodes' plots take little inspiration from Barks' and Rosa's stories, so much so that even Don Rosa himself described the reboot as having "virtually no similarity to whatsoever" to the comic books while noting that the older series was at least "very loosely based" on the comic books.
• Hellboy (2019) demonstrates more closeness to the source material than Guillermo del Toro's films. Del Toro's Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army were more specifically based on the first volume, Seed of Destruction, which itself was rife with a few Early Installment Weirdnesses while this film brings to focus the expanded lore in later volumes such as Hellboy's ancestral connections to King Arthur and Nimue being the Big Bad after Rasputin was quietly defeated and done away with. There's also the B.P.R.D.'s expansion from mostly consisting of generic men in black Red Shirts to including weird and colorful characters like were-jaguar Ben Daimio.
• The Hellboy Animated animated movie duology is the closest an Hellboy adaptation has come to faithfully adapting the source material's tone. The "Iron Shoes" short, in particular, is an almost panel-by-panel recreation of the original story.
• Lucky Luke (1983-1984/1991-1992). The previous animated entries, the feature films Daisy Town and Ballad of the Daltons, didn't adapt any story from the comics in particular and instead used various characters and situations from the comics. The animated series went for a straight adaptation of existing comics at the time (mostly stories written by René Goscinny and some others made after his passing). The following series, The New Adventures of Lucky Luke, went for wholly original stories meanwhile.
• MAD Magazine has been on a rollercoaster of this. Their first TV adaptation was in 1974, with an animated special that faithfully adapted the magazine. In 1995, MADtv began as a late-night, live-action sketch show. However, after its' first 3 seasons, it largely dropped any pretenses of connection with the magazine aside from the name. It ended in 2009 (with a brief revival in 2016)... and the following year, Cartoon Network's animated MAD went on the air, and was perhaps even more faithful than the 1974 attempt, to the point of having animated versions of the MAD Marginals!
• 1987's The New Archies and 1999's Archie's Weird Mysteries fixed Veronica's Unexplained Accent from previous adaptations. In Archie Comics, Veronica is a New Yorker, yet The Adventures of Archie Andrews radio show and cartoons influenced by it portray her with a Southern accent.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) was a closer approximation of the style and tone of the original comics than the 1987 series. Whereas the show was very playful and aimed more towards big sci-fi adventures, the comics and movie had a more gritty, urban vigilante take on the Turtles (albeit mixing elements of the show such as the Turtles' personalities, and April's job as a TV news reporter). Additionally, the 1990 film directly adapted several stories from the comics themselves, including the Leonardo and Raphael one-shots,^note the first seeing Leo ambushed by the Foot — an arc given to Raph in the movie — while the latter features Raph and Casey's first meeting "Silent Partner,"^note the fight against the Foot in April's apartment and antiques shop the extended arc of the Turtles in exile on April's upstate farm, "Return to New York," and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1.^note both of which figured into the film's climax. In an interesting play on the trope, both were quite successful (the show was a Pragmatic Adaptation in every respect) and both ends of the spectrum are widely accepted as part of the TMNT lore.
  • Zig-Zagged in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003). Much of the series' first season episodes are adaptations of the comic books, and often faithfully (albeit often with some liberties taken, such as new characters like Hun, and other changes to keep the Shredder relevant). Mid-Season 1, and especially after Season 2, the series started greatly diverging from the comics, eventually telling a new story by Seasons 3 and 4.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) had an interesting deal with this behind-the-scenes. The original script had the Shredder be the alter-ego of an American businessman named Eric Sachs, who adopted it from the stories of an ancient Japanese warlord. This is actually in line with the comics mythology as many different characters have taken on the name of the Shredder (replicated in the 2003 series) but was not present in the 1987 series or the 1990 film series. Fan backlash to the idea of a "Whitewashed Shredder" led reshoots to have a more traditional Japanese Shredder included in Sachs's Evil Plan. The sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, incorporates more elements of both the 1990 film series (Casey Jones) and the 1987 series (Bebop and Rocksteady), along with the now younger Japanese Shredder with no trace of Sachs.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is a much more faithful adaptation of the 1987 series compared to the games by Konami. The older games had a focus on action that's similar to the comics, with minimal comedic elements, and typically had an Excuse Plot. This game fully brings back the show's playful tone and also most of its quirky supporting cast, such as the Channel 6 crew and Neutrinos. Many of the level locations are taken from the series, as well.
• Watchmen (2019) is a sequel to Watchmen rather than an adaptation, but it's still considerably more faithful to the comic book than the 2009 film adaptation in a few key respects. Among other things: Ozymandias apparently did attack New York with a genetically engineered monster (not an energy explosion), Robert Redford did apparently get elected President after Nixon's resignation (not Ronald Reagan), and Doctor Manhattan is still living in isolation on Mars and treated with bemused wonderment by humanity (and wasn't blamed for New York's destruction). The series also works in a few details that the movie left out, like the idea that Doctor Manhattan's abilities allowed humanity to develop futuristic new inventions, and the idea that the advent of superheroes drastically changed the face of American popular culture. As seen in the third episode, Adrian Veidt's Ozymandias costume is also quite accurate to the comic, being bright purple and gold with a prominent collar (not a formfitting spandex suit of black and silver).

Adapted from Fan Works

• Digimon Codex: This is done for the Royal Knights. Despite being described as the Big Goods of Digimon lore, with them being the primary defenders of the Digital World, they are infamously portrayed with Adaptational Villainy on a regular basis in their appearances in the various anime and games they appear in. Here, they are unquestionably a heroic group and are the protectors of the Digital World they are supposed to be, not working for any evil Digimon like Lucemon or blindly following the orders of their creator King Drasil, or wanting to destroy their home or the Earth. The main characters actually end up befriending them and becoming allies with them rather than enemies.
• The Dragon and the Bow: To the How to Train Your Dragon books more so than the films. Astrid's middle name is Camicazi, and her mother's called Bertha (after Big-Boobied Bertha and Camicazi, the Bog-Burglar chieftain and her heir); Fishlegs and Hiccup are close friends; Snotlout is Hiccup's cousin; Hiccup's mother is called Valhallarama, and was a stereotypical fat Viking woman instead of a slender, attractive woman called Valka; Alvin the Treacherous is a skinny, devious man who killed Hiccup's mother via betrayal instead of overpowering her; and the Red Death is an intelligent, talking dragon, and a lot more malicious than his animalistic film counterpart.
• From The Fog: Unlike other Herobrine mods that turn him into an actively malicious monster who can cause griefing levels of damage, or other fan-works that depict him as a ghostly or godly deity in the context of the Minecraft world, this mod sticks closer to his Creepypasta depiction as a haunted entity that seems to exist in the world as another Player Character, who oftentimes stay sout of the player's view in a stalker-like manner.
• Rainbow Dash Presents: "Captain Hook The Biker Gorilla" does this for Rainbow Dash. While she was a murderous Corrupt Corporate Executive in Rainbow Factory, here, she's much more inline with how she normally acts in Friendship is Magic, remaining fiercely loyal to the fillies' safety despite still being appointed Supervisor, being horrendously disgusted by the rainbow-making machine and goes out of her way to try and sabotage it a few times over the course of the story. She's also only been Supervisor for three days at that point, having not killed anyone and instead going through a Despair Event Horizon in the company bathroom.

Adapted from Literature

By Creator:

• When it comes to faithful animated adaptations of fairy tales, Sanrio was able to successfully pull this off with their characters in 1989 and 2000.
  • In the summer of 1989, Sanrio created two anime adaptations based on the original Grimm versions (Hello Kitty no Cinderella starring Hello Kitty, and My Melody no Akazukin starring My Melody). These adaptations are a unique example, since both were able to keep the company's cuteness factor while simultaneously sticking to the stories' dark and frightening tone.
  • Sanrio returned to doing more adaptations of fairy tales in 2000 with the OVA series Hello Kitty's Animation Theater, ^note  not to be confused with the western made Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater by Dic Entertainment. which also adapts the works of Hans Christian Andersen with other Sanrio characters. The best example is their adaptation of Snow White and The Little Match Girl, which the latter kept the stories' Bittersweet Ending.
• Mockbusters based on public domain fairytales in general.

By Title:

• The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is one of the most faithful adaptations of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, oddly enough. It's one of the rare versions that leaves the Horseman open to possibly just being a prank, keeps the Ambiguous Ending, and leaves Ichabod as more of an Anti-Hero to Brom's Anti-Villain. The same movie includes an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows that's much looser, however.
  • The Wind in the Willows (1995), in turn, is truer to the text than the Disney version, cutting almost nothing from the book.
• The 1972 Italian animated adaptation of The Adventures of Pinocchio called Un Burattino Di Nome Pinocchio (A puppet called Pinocchio) is by far the most faithful adaptation of Pinocchio, having dialogue taken from the book and respecting its topics and times. It shows the Busy Bee Island, for example, which is taken out of many adaptations. The Green Fisherman who almost eats Pinocchio is also present in this adaptation when he's usually not seen in other Pinocchio adaptations.
• The little-known 1949 film adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is ironically one of the most faithful. The narrative sticks relatively closely to the book without incorporating elements of Through the Looking-Glass, and the puppets that represent the inhabitants of Wonderland are designed to closely resemble the original John Tenniel illustrations. Some characters rarely seen in adaptations, such as the giant puppy, also appear.
• And Then There Were None: Both the 1987 Soviet film adaptation Desyat Negrityat and the 2015 BBC miniseries retain the book's "Everybody Dies" Ending and deep cynicism. In particular, the Soviet version's ending is nearly 1:1 with the novel's, with the only major deviation being the fact that Wargrave's confession takes the form of a soliloquy rather than a Message in a Bottle.
• The Animorphs graphic novel series follows the books' plots note-for-note with only minor changes, unlike the budget-restricted TV show. Since the graphic novels obviously don't have to deal with a limited special effects budget, they're able to truly show off the Animorphs' full range of animal transformations, and they're able to feature the saga's various alien races (the Andalites, the Hork-Bajir, the Taxxon, etc.) much more prominently.
• The graphic novel of The Book of the Named is this to the 1980s animated special. It keeps the character designs more intact and is significantly less toned down than the cartoon version.
• Carrie:
  • The Made-for-TV Movie from 2002 is much closer to the book than the original film. Like the book, the story is told in flashbacks via the interviews that the few survivors give to the police (the book did this through memoirs, investigative reports, and news articles), Carrie destroys the entire town as opposed to just the school and her house, and she kills her mother with a psychically-induced heart attack rather than stabbing her. The only major difference is that she survives the ordeal and goes into hiding, which was meant to lead into a TV series which never came about.
  • A leaked script for the 2013 adaptation also indicated a film that was meant to be closer to the book. The initial teaser indicated that this film, like the 2002 version, would feature the destruction of the town from the book, and hinted at the book's use of flashbacks and witness testimonies to tell its story. Executive Meddling, however, turned it into something close to a Shot-for-Shot Remake of the 1976 film. Naturally, there have been rumors that a lot of scenes (up to 40 minutes' worth) were cut from the finished film, rumors that have been backed up by some of the actors, which has led to a fan petition asking the studio to release an extended cut or at least the deleted scenes.
• Catch-22: The 2019 six-part miniseries is more faithful to the original book than the 1970 film, though it still takes considerable liberties due to the book's abundance of plot lines and tons of characters.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
  • Tim Burton adapted the book into Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, intending to make it more faithful to the book than Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. For example, in the Tim Burton movie, the lyrics of the Oompa-Loompas' songs are shortened versions of the songs in the book, whereas the songs in Willy Wonka have completely different lyrics. Subverted with the endings, however; Willy Wonka kept the ending relatively faithful to the book (although it ended the story slightly earlier), while Tim Burton's version threw in a twist right at the end.
  • The 2013 West End stage musical is a Pragmatic Adaptation that's more faithful than either film version despite a Setting Update and more emphasis on the story's Black Comedy. There's far less Adaptation Expansion than in either film — no Slugworth subplot or backstory for Willy Wonka — and what expansion there is exists mostly to make Charlie a less passive protagonist (he's a budding inventor, etc.), meaning that it also focuses more on Charlie himself than the films do, or to make the Bratty Kids more obnoxiously deserving of their fates. Averted by the 2017 Broadway Retool, which follows the lead of the film adaptations by greatly expanding Mr. Wonka's role and diminishing those of Charlie and his family.
• Chipn Dale Rescue Rangers 2022 makes Peter Pan the Big Bad by having one once be the more heroic character he was playing when he was younger, until Disney fired him once he got too old for the role.
• A Christmas Carol:
  • In A Christmas Carol (1971), Scrooge remembering the storybook characters he loved in the Past sequence is usually left out for brevity's sake, with this version being one of the few that keeps it. It also keeps in the many other spirits that Scrooge sees outside his window, the ever-changing appearance of the Ghost of Christmas Past, the lighthouse workers celebrating Christmas, and Ignorance and Want.
  • Likewise, A Christmas Carol (1997) also keeps the storybook characters.
  • A Christmas Carol (1999) is one of the closest adaptations of A Christmas Carol filmed, retaining three scenes almost always omitted from other adaptations — the lighthouse workers, coal miners, and sailors on a ship at sea celebrating Christmas. Ignorance and Want are also included, as are the young debtors relieved at Scrooge's death and the other chained spirits Marley shows Scrooge.
  • A Christmas Carol (2009) is also very accurate, retaining many scenes and even lines from the novella, keeping Ignorance and Want, and having the appearance of the characters (including the three ghosts) be accurate to how they were described in the original story. It even includes a sequence almost always left out of adaptations where Scrooge asks the Ghost of Christmas Present about the bad things the Church does in God's name.
• Conan the Barbarian (2011), according to Word of God, was intended to be closer to the original Robert E. Howard novels than the 1982 film was. True, Conan isn't Made a Slave and forced to fight in Gladiator Games for years, but the plot is still original.
• The Day of the Triffids has been adapted for the screen three times. The most faithful was the 1980s BBC adaptation, which pruned a few subplots and overhauled a couple of character backstories to fit with a downplayed Setting Update^note the book was set 20 Minutes into the Future from the perspective of the late 1950s, while the series was set definitively in the then-Present Day but otherwise stayed very faithful to the text. The 2009 miniseries was much looser, with several Composite Characters and others having their backstories changed heavily, not to mention some major alterations to the titular triffids. The 1960s movie adaptation was so different one wonders why they even bought the rights.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • The 2021 animated adaptation is much more faithful to the book than the live-action film, this version had Greg create "Zoo-Wee Mama" along with Rowley just like in the book, while the live-action film had Rowley fully come up with it, and the animated film mentioned the Wizard of Oz play taking place in winter like in the book, unlike the live-action film which had the play take place in spring, Abe Hall is the one to take the cheese touch with him unlike the live action film where it was instead a German exchange student named Dieter Muller, and it had much more involvement from Jeff Kinney, the author of the original books.
  • The 2022 animated adaptation of Rodrick Rules had Greg and Rowley remain trapped in the basement for the rest of the night during Rodrick's party, unlike the live-action film in which Rodrick had to let them out after receiving a call from Susan checking in on him and Greg. Bill Walter is also much closer to his book counterpart than in the live-action film, since still tries to get Rodrick back into the talent show, instead of outright replacing him.
• Dracula: Bram Stoker's Dracula and a 1977 BBC series are more faithful adaptations than most, including the iconic Dracula (1931). Christopher Lee enjoyed Count Dracula (1970), as he felt it was this. The BBC series is considered the most faithful adaptation period.
• Some productions of Duke Bluebeard's Castle change the ending to have Judith and the other women escape Bluebeard, making it closer to the original Bluebeard fairy tale.
• Dune:
  • The Denis Villeneuve film adaptation fully embraces the Well-Intentioned Extremist / Dark Messiah Paul Atreides becomes, which is how Frank Herbert wrote him. The David Lynch film, by comparison, did not go that route.
  • Alia Atreides from the Lynch film is closer to her book counterpart than the Villeneuve one in that she's been born (with a rapidly maturing mind in a child's body) by the time of the Final Battle against the Harkonnens and The Emperor while the Villeneuve version has yet to be born by this point.
  • The David Lynch movie itself is far more accurate than the cancelled Alejandro Jodorowsky movie would have been, as Jodorowsky started writing the script before he read the book based on his own vision of how a friend described it and then decided to stick to his own extravaganza once he did get around to reading it, before everything fell apart.
  • The 2000 Frank Herbert's Dune miniseries took some liberties with Herbert's book, but compared to the Lynch movie and the Denis Villeneuve duology, its fidelity to the text is nigh-slavish.
  • The Harkonnens have hair in the book, which is also the case in the Lynch film and the Syfy miniseries. They're bald in the Villeneuve verse, meanwhile.
  • The Weirding Way is a martial art form, which the Villeneuve films and miniseries more or less convey. In the Lynch film however, it's changed to boxes shooting sonic lasers.
• Frankenstein:
  • Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a more faithful adaptation of the book than most adaptations, including the iconic Frankenstein (1931).
  • The Wishbone episode "Frankenbone" is notable for being one of the more faithful filmed adaptations of the story, despite being condensed to fit a series of vignettes in a half-hour episode of a children's TV show. Appropriate, given that Wishbone is an educational show intended to familiarize children with classic works of literature.
  • The 2004 Hallmark mini series is even more faithful than the 1994 film, with a book accurate design for the Creature, a version of the De Lacey’s story (although Safé is Adapted Out) and far less liberties taken. Although some details are still changed (Walton is older than described, Elizabeth nurses Victor back to health instead of Henry, William’s death is an Accidental Murder, Victor attempts to prove Justine’s innocence, Ernest is Adapted Out and the locations are reduced to Geneva and Ingolstadt), the overall story is considered to be the closest to the book.
  • The 2008 off Broadway musical adaptation is also a faithful retelling, although some details are changed such as Henry being a priest and Victor living long enough to apologize to the Creature for abandoning him.
• The most faithful adaptation of The Iliad is The Fury of Achilles, a little-known Sword and Sandal film from 1962.
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) is often mistaken for a simple remake, when in fact it's an example of this trope: the Swedish film suffered from some really bizarre adaptational choices, whereas the American version was an almost 1:1 adaptation of the original book with some very minor cuts to make the story flow better.
• The novel Heidi describes Heidi as having dark, curly hair. In many many adaptations (including the Shirley Temple one), she's been portrayed as a blonde, but in the 2015 film, Anuk Steffen fits the book description to a T.
• Heroic Times is a mostly faithful but heavily compressed retelling of all three Toldi books, told as a flashback via the narration of the bitter elderly Toldi. No characters are named, some don't appear at all and it's so dark and depressing that almost none of the original text's colorful poetry shines through. The 2021 Toldi animated series and its 2022 theatrical cut, which adapts only the first book, is literally the poem read out aloud word-for-word by the omnipresent ghost of author János Arany talking to the audience (with only a handful passages left out), even visualizing the poem's metaphors and changing the art style every few minutes to follow suit. It's less of an adaptation of the story and more so a whimsically meta visualization of the poem's text, with only small changes to the content.
• The 1962 Broadway musical based on I Can Get It For You Wholesale, with a script adapted by author Jerome Weidman, is far closer to the original novel than the In Name Only 1951 movie, despite a few plot changes. In particular, while the movie erases all traces of the main characters' Jewish heritage, the musical plays them up to the point of including a bar mitzvah scene.
• It (2017) and its sequel have the advantage of a bigger budget and an R rating, making them both closer to the book than the 1990 two-part miniseries and a lot scarier.
  • Zig-zagged. Although the 2017-2019 duology is more violent and actually includes the Niebolt house, It (1990) is actually more faithful to the plot of the novel, not to mention the fact that It (2017) adds a Second-Act Breakup and turns Beverly into a Damsel in Distress.
• The 1982 film adaptation of Ivanhoe is significantly closer to the source material than both the condensed 1952 film adaptation and the expanded 1997 miniseries adaptation.
• The Prime Video adaptation of Jack Reacher stars Alan Ritchson, wanting to depict the title character as the big burly blonde of the novels after the movies went for the clear opposite of that in Tom Cruise.
• Jew Suss, a 1925 novel by Lion Feuchtwanger, is most widely known for its infamous 1940 Nazi adaptation, which is widely considered one of the most anti-Semitic films of the Nazi era, if not of all time. But what many people don't know is that the novel received a far more faithful 1934 film adaptation in Britain that actually condemned anti-Semitism.
• The Jungle Book:
  • The Chuck Jones specials and Adventures of Mowgli have proven to be the most faithful adaptations. The former for the most part are the stories themselves with some minor changes, the latter covers Mowgli's life from childhood to adulthood and keeps the tone of the stories.
  • Mowgli is also a lot closer to the original books than the Disney adaptations. Tabaqui and Messua have roles in the story when in most adaptations they're Adapted Out, Shere Khan has a bad leg, Mowgli goes back to the jungle because he struggles at adjusting to human society, Baloo is a serious teacher, Bagheera used to live among humans in a cage, and Kaa (while female like in the 2016 live-action film) is wise and not a villain.
  • The Jungle Book (2016), the Disney Live Action Remake of The Jungle Book (1967), keeps most of Disney's changes but adds some material and characters back in, most notably roles for Raksha and Gray (though the latter is a pup instead of an adult). It also has a darker tone like the books. Shere Khan is disabled again, though it's changed from a club foot to a burned face, providing a Freudian Excuse for his hatred of man and fire.
• In Justified, Raylan Givens is well known for his nice hat. However, the character's creator, Elmore Leonard, was never quite satisfied with the look of the hat. In the final episode Raylan's hat is destroyed in a duel with the wannabe duelist Boone. For the rest of the episode, Raylan wears Boone's hat, which is far closer to the hat Leonard imagined for the character.
• The second Kino's Journey anime uses Kino's design from the light novels. The first anime featured a slightly different design with Anime Hair.
• The 1971 BBC eight part mini-series adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans is the most faithful adaptation of the second part of The Leatherstocking Tales to date.
• The 2018 (and ongoing) adaptation of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Die Neue These, not only does a Setting Update to the original OVAs, but also sticks more closely to the original novels than the previous anime.
• The 1968 Soviet animated film The Little Mermaid is one of the most faithful adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the same name, particularly compared to the one that came out 21 years later.
• Carson McCullers adapted her novel The Member of the Wedding for the stage herself, despite never having written a play before, to preempt the production of a more conventionally theatrical adaptation by another writer.
• Record of Lodoss War has two anime adaptations: an OAV and Chronicles of the Heroic Knight. To make a long story short, out of these two, the earlier is more popular, but less accurate (conflating the paths of multiple characters, ommitting some, some characters that are supposed to die actually survive and vice versa, etc.), while the latter is a more faithful adaptation.
  • This OAV adaptation largely adapts the story that became the first volume of the novelization; "The Grey Witch". However, in its last five episodes, it attempts to cram in the story of the third and fourth novel volumes; a two-parter called "The Demon Dragon of Fire Dragon Mountain" — this leads to a looser adaptation and an OAV-unique ending.
  • Chronicles of the Heroic Knight presents a more faithful adaptation of the last three stories of the novelization series; "The Demon Dragon of Fire Dragon Mountain" two-parter, "The Kings' Holy War", and "The Holy Knights of Lodoss", a second two-parter and the finale of the original campaign.
• Once Upon a Time does this with a lot of the stories it adapts (which were adapted into popular films).
  • When Oz appears, there are four witches to represent the four points on a compass. The witches are given magical items to focus their powers. The shoes are also silver like they are in the book (the MGM film famously made them ruby).
  • Mulan is closer to her counterpart in Chinese mythology - a proud young woman who wished to become a warrior and prove herself.
  • Cruella de Vil is attractive like her book counterpart, and there's a reference to her being married (she had a husband in the book).
  • Ursula appears this time as a benevolent sea goddess, referencing that the sea witch was a neutral entity in the original story. When another take on Ursula appears (this one said to be named after the goddess) she too is an Anti-Villain who gets redeemed.
  • Pinocchio is shown to be very flawed like his book counterpart. While Disney made him a naive child who got talked into bad things because of his innocence, the book version knew right from wrong but still chose wrong more often.
  • When the Frozen characters appear, the show ties them into The Snow Queen tale. The actual Snow Queen appears as a separate character from Elsa (who was inspired by her in the film) and her plot involving a mirror making everyone see the awfulness in humanity comes from the devil's mirror in the story. Anna and Elsa's mother is renamed Gerda after the heroine of the tale (and Fanon has the father named Kai to follow suit).
  • Peter Pan is portrayed as a villain, which isn't too far off his book counterpart - where he was a morally ambiguous Anti-Hero who would frequently switch sides during fights with the Lost Boys and the pirates.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief musical is a much more faithful adaptation of the first book compared to the 2010 movie adaptation. The Disney+ series is also more faithful to the books, especially since Rick Riordan, the author of the books, produced the series.
• Jane Austen's Persuasion has been adapted into a movie twice, and this trope is inverted in that the earlier adaptation is regarded as far more faithful than the later one.
• Peter Pan:
  • Hook arguably captured the spirit of the Peter Pan original stageplay and book better than the Disney film, despite being more of a sequel.
  • The 2003 live-action Peter Pan is a straighter example.
• Land of Oz:
  • The 1939 movie of The Wizard of Oz makes fewer changes to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz than some silent movie adaptations did.
  • The 1985 Return to Oz comes even closer to the style and tone of the original Land of Oz books despite being a blend of the first two sequels, The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz. Dorothy is played by a more age-appropriate child actor, details like the Tin Woodman's backstory from the books and the presence of the Deadly Desert around Oz are included, and the plot adheres closely to the book elements it brings together, including grim elements. However, it also catered to viewers of the MGM film and posed as a sequel with details like the color of the magic slippers and the use of the And You Were There trope, confusing people who didn't know of the books and found the film a jarringly frightening follow-up.
  • A 1984 Text Adventure from Windham Classics (an offshoot of educational software company Spinnaker) was a shockingly faithful adaptation, almost going scene by scene, save for splitting off at the point where the party hunts for the Wicked Witch of the West by incorporating a huge chunk of The Marvelous Land of Oz by finding Tip, Jack, and Sawhorse and quelling Jinjur's revolt. They did have to cut the Gender Bender aspect of Tip, though.
  • The Muppets' Wizard of Oz while including lots of jokes and meta humor, also has a lot more plot points from the original novel than many adaptations. (Such as there being four witches.)
• The 1989 version of The Phantom of the Opera is essentially a Slasher Movie that features time-travel, a deal with the Devil and the flaying/harvesting of skin for the Phantom's mask...but at the same time, it's actually pretty faithful to the original novel in many respects. It features a lot of details that have often been left out of the various adaptations over the years, such as constant references to Gounod's version of Faust and Christine being cast as the lead role of Marguerite; Erik playing the violin for Christine at Monsieur Daae's grave; the punjab lasso; the rat catcher; Erik having a black mask rather than a White Mask of Doom like most adaptations. This line especially is used from the original novel:
  "This is either a wedding march or a funeral mass. You decide."
• When it comes to Planet of the Apes, truer to the text adaptations have been minor in their approach. Return to the Planet of the Apes featured the apes with the advanced technology analogue to the era the show was produced in like how the novel had the apes with technology analogue to the era it was written in, and Planet of the Apes (2001) keeps the titular planet as being a separate planet rather than a future earth. As previously stated, these more faithful changes are relatively minor.
• The 2002 film version of The Quiet American was much more faithful to the novel than the 1958 film, which was a product of the Cold War years and was criticised by author Graham Greene for being too propagandistic. The biggest change made in the 2002 film was the addition of an epilogue showing newspaper stories by Fowler about the events after the novel was first published.
• Out of the four adaptations of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. ^note  Rudolph's Shiny New Year, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer & the Island of Misfit Toys don't count. Only two adapted the original 1939 story/poem by Robert May◊. The 1948 cartoon by Max Fleischer and the obscure 1996 direct-to-video adaptation Rudolph's Lessons for Life by Montgomery Ward are the only versions of Rudolph that actually adapted the original story. Rudolph's Lessons For Life even keeps the rhyming scheme found in the original story. The Max Fleischer cartoon and the 1996 adaptation both show Rudolph properly meeting Santa in his bedroom◊ where he finds Rudolph sleeping◊, and Rudolph's red nose glowing all the time (such as still glowing while Rudolph's sleeping◊), unlike the 1964 and 1998 adaptations where his nose works like a light bulb. The Rankin-Bass Special and the 1998 movie by Golden Films also adapted the song, while the 1998 movie uses small bits from the 1939 story/poem.
• The 2017 Netflix TV adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events is much closer to the book series than the 2004 film. It helps that the TV series dedicates two episodes to each book, as opposed to three stories in one film. Also, Daniel Handler, the original author of the books, was more involved in the series than he was in the film.
• The 1997 miniseries of The Shining was far closer to Stephen King's book than the 1980 film, apart from the miniseries' Bowdlerised ending.
• Martin Scorsese's 2016 adaptation of Silence by Shūsaku Endō was far more faithful to the text than the 1971 adaptation by Masahiro Shinoda which took massive liberties with the novel's final section and deleted many important elements from the book. Scorsese's adaptation includes virtually the entire novel, including the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue.
• The candidates for the most faithful adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the 1959 film The Doctors Horrible Experiment, 1971's I, Monster and the 1980's Burbank Films Australia adaptation. Later Broadway revivals of Jekyll & Hyde hew closer to the show's original vision, which was darker and edgier than the 1997 version and closer to the book, having Jekyll revel in the freedom Hyde gave him and paraphrasing directly from the book as he contemplated his dual natures. Some play versions also keep the twist a surprise and have Utterson keep his investigatory role. In Noah Smith's stage version of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll and his friends are middle-aged, Jekyll's hypocrisy is acknowledged by himself and other characters, and Utterson's investigatory role is kept; much of the major incidents from the book are kept, with the exception of Carew's murder, which is given to Enfield. However, it must be noted that no matter how faithful the adaptation is a lot of the story will be changed in some way or another and new characters may be inserted.
• Tarzan:
  • In contrast to what came before it, such as the Johnny Weissmuller films (1930s to 1940s), and in some cases after it, the Filmation series Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (1976 to 1979) is the most faithful screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs jungle hero, featuring a number of the lost cities from the novels, rotoscoped animation based on Burroughs's favourite Tarzan artist Burne Hogarth, Tarzan portrayed as intelligent and well-spoken, his sidekick being N'Kima and much of the Mangani language of the novels is even used. No simple-minded caricature or annoying chimp sidekick here.
  • As for live-action films, the 1918 film "Tarzan of the Apes" (with Elmo Lincoln), The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935, with Herman Brix), Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984, with Christopher Lambert), Tarzan and the Lost City (1998, with Casper Van Dien) and The Legend of Tarzan (2016, with Alexander Skarsgård) are all fairly close to the original novels, with Lost City being the most faithful in terms of old-fashioned pulpy action since the other two tried to deconstruct him a bit but in terms of adaptation of the original novel, the point goes to the 1918 film.
• The Thing (1982) compared to The Thing from Another World. The older film uses the book's beginning with the researchers finding a UFO in the ice containing an alien, but from there diverges quite a bit. The 1982 movie has the alien keep its assimilation powers and overall stays much closer to the plot of the book.
• The two-part Richard Lester film adaptation of The Three Musketeers is extremely close to the novel despite combining, cutting, and killing off some characters. It is more faithful than all other film adaptations.
• The 1978 film The Thirty Nine Steps (1978) is a fairly close adaptation of John Buchan's novel, apart from the addition of an action climax. It was explicitly intended to be a more faithful adaptation than Hitchcock's version, which the producer described as "about 20 percent Buchan and 80 percent Hitchcock".
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • As the book had for decades been considered unfilmable, there are only a handful of attempts to adapt The Lord of the Rings to film.
    • Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings is by far the closest to the text of the few, starting by actually breaking it into three films, as opposed to Ralph Bakshi's incomplete two-parter, and Rankin/Bass Productions only adapting The Return of the King. Jackson's films also keep more of the large cast and subplots intact.
    • The Extended Editions of the trilogy are this compared to the theatrical release, restoring more content, characters, and explorations of Tolkien's setting that was cut from the theatrical release for time, and concerns that Viewers Are Morons.
    • WXP's licensed video game adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring from 2002 is most notable for being considerably closer to the plot of the book than the Peter Jackson movie. This is because it was adapted directly from the book, and wasn't officially a tie-in with the movie released the previous year (WXP only had the rights to adapt the books into video games, while Electronic Arts had the rights to adapt the movies). Among other things: Tom Bombadil has a prominent role, the subplot about Frodo selling Bag End and pretending to move to Buckland is added back, much of the dialogue is lifted word-for-word from the text of the novel, and it features an extended prologue set in the Shire where nearly every minor Hobbit character from the books is an NPC.
  • Likewise, there have only been a handful of adaptations of The Hobbit. Rankin and Bass' animated The Hobbit is generally viewed as more faithful, as Jackson's live-action film invented numerous subplots, as well as incorporating material from other sources (such as the appendices to The Lord of the Rings) to more closely tie his adaptation into The Lord of the Rings, while also inflating the single, relatively short book, to three three-hour films. The 1966 short film was an In Name Only adaptation.
• The Coen Brothers said this was their intention when they made their film adaptation of True Grit.
• Westeros: An American Musical: This is zig-zagged considering the play's parody nature, but quite a few elements from the A Song of Ice and Fire books make more of an appearance than they ever did in Game of Thrones:
  • Leo Lefford makes an appearance in "Hand of the King".
  • Roose Bolton wears pink, which is the main House Bolton color in the books. The TV show went with Red and Black and Evil All Over.
  • Sarella Sand is among the Sand Snakes.
  • The animosity between the Reach and Dorne, which was absent from the TV show.
  • Shae is played as the Gold Digger she is in the books.
  • A hairnet is used to get the poison used to kill Joffrey where it needs to be, while the accessory was changed to a necklace in the TV show.
  • Edric Storm serves as Melisandre’s source of King’s blood, while this part of his storyline was given to Gendry in the TV series.
  • Several characters who were Adapted Out of the TV series, such as Coldhands and Ser Cortnay Penrose, are among the name-dropped characters.
  • The actress playing Catelyn is also credited as playing Val, which indicates that the blonde Wildling woman seen in "Sword in the Darkness" is supposed to be her.

Adapted from Live-Action Films

• Godzilla
  • Godzilla: The Series is closer to the original Japanese films than the film it spun off from (Godzilla (1998)). Godzilla fights other monsters and has his trademark atomic Breath Weapon
  • Godzilla (2014) is much more faithful to the original Japanese films than the first American remake of the franchise, Godzilla (1998). More so the creature's design than the movie itself, as The Remake is more in line with a Christopher Nolan movie than the sci-fi horror of Godzilla (1954). Though much like the Showa Era, later movies in the MonsterVerse such as Godzilla vs. Kong would take a more campy direction after the Marvel Cinematic Universe became the ideal action blockbuster. Regardless, both are exactly what American Kaiju fans and mainstream audiences wanted to see. So much so, later Japanese designs borrowed heavily from this one.
• The Peter Jackson adaptation of King Kong is a lot closer to the 1933 movie than the preceding Dino De Laurentiis remake (which removed the dinosaurs, shifted the setting to the then-present day, and heavily altered the human characters, among other changes), right down to setting the movie in 1933. The Jackson version goes so far as adapting the "Spider Pit" sequence, a notorious Deleted Scene from the original film.

Adapted from Live-Action TV

• Bean, based on the internationally beloved British sitcom, was a Big Damn Movie that featured more raunchy humor and greater dialogue than what was shown in the source material in order to appeal to American audiences who were generally unfamiliar with Mr. Bean or his trademark use of mime and slapstick. Mr. Bean's Holiday, by contrast, was significantly less Americanized, removing all the raunch and seeing the titular character return to his near-mute, slapstick origins by playing more like an extended skit from the TV series.

Adapted from Manga

• The Bleach anime adaptation for the Thousand Year Blood War arc retains the violence (compared with the anime's original run where it was frequently toned down), also retaining several characters' appearances from the manga, undoing their adaptation dye jobs (for instance, Matsumoto is blond like in the manga rather than red-haired like in the original anime).
• The anime adaptation of the Haruhi Suzumiya spinoff manga The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan restores some characteristics of the original series that were absent in the manga, such as Kyon's First-Person Smartass narration and Koizumi's Ambiguously Gay moments.
• For Doraemon, movies based on the Doraemon's Long Tales series have their share of remakes since 2006, and several of the later movies are actually closer to the original manga.
  • The dialogue in the 2006 remake of Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur is lifted directly from the original manga, compared to the 1980 original with slight alterations. Most noticeably, the remake and manga both have Gian staying silent for most of the conversation before standing up in support of not handing Piisuke over. In the first movie, he wonders whether being kept in a rich person's swimming pool would really be so bad for Piisuke, a line that was originally spoken by Suneo in the manga. Additionally, Piisuke trying to shield Shizuka and the baby sauropod from a T. rex happens in both the manga and remake, but not in the first movie adaptation.
  • The 2009 remake of Doraemon: The Records of Nobita, Spaceblazer has the alien bunny Chammy's design (with black sclerae and a longer tail) more similar to the original manga, compared to her appearance in the 1981 movie. It also ends with Guillermin The Dragon being defeated in a duel against Nobita, just like in the manga (in the first movie, Guillermin is knocked out by Ropporu's stun gun).
  • In the later version of Doraemon: Nobita and the Haunts of Evil, the main characters are stranded in Africa owing to the Anywhere Door being left unattended in Tokyo and destroyed by Kaminari who mistook it to be trash, while the original movie have the door being eaten by crocodiles. The climax of the remake is also closer to the manga, with Nobita challenging Saberu using the Sword of Denkomaru (the original movie had Peko fighting Saberu in Nobita's stead), the heroes interrogating a captured Saberu on Minister Daburanda's whereabouts (the first movie have them somehow figuring out by themselves) and show the heroes having a feast (and Shizuka taking a bath) in Bauwan after the villains are defeated (absent in the original film).
  • The climax of 2009's Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld have the gang using Doraemon's gadgets against the Demon army for the climax, like in the manga. The original movie have them using magic instead.
  • Doraemon: Nobita's Little Space War, has two versions from 1985 and a remake in 2021, the more recent remake closer to the original manga, with designs of the new characters like Papi, General Gilmore, Dracorl and others practically lifted from the manga panels compared to the original which took some creative liberties in their aesthetics. Gian who receives an Adaptational Badass in the original movie and took down Dracorl's battleship single-handedly was also changed to the gang grabbing stray drones and using Percussive Maintenance to attack the battleship together, just like in the manga.
  • The remake of Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan ends with a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue where the gang checks on Kukuru in the past using the Time TV, which was somehow cut in the original movie.
• Dragon Ball Z Kai serves as a remastered Adaptation Distillation of the first Dragon Ball Z anime, with most of the filler removed (not to mention greatly reducing the original show's infamous abuse of Talking Is a Free Action). Even its dub is this, sticking closer to the original characterizations and dialogue, by contrast to the DBZ dub.
• The 2001 anime adaptation of Fruits Basket only covers the first seven volumes of the manga, is generally Lighter and Softer with more emphasis on comedy, makes several changes to the plot and characters (including unintentionally changing Akito's gender), and would have overtaken the manga entirely had it gone on any longer. The 2019 anime adaptation, however, covers the entire story and sticks much closer to the original manga's plot and tone than the first adaptation did. The fact that Natsuki Takaya hated the 2001 adaptation even while it was being made undoubtedly has something to do with it, and she serves as chief production supervisor to the 2019 anime.
• The 2003 anime adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist was made when the manga was very early in the author's planned storyline (four volumes into what eventually became a twenty-seven volume series). Consequently, its first half adapts then-existing manga chapters with some liberties, and its second half is wholly original. By the time the manga was reaching its final year, it had remained popular enough to receive a direct adaptation called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
• Gunslinger Girl Teatrino is this to the manga. The art style resembles the manga more closely, it's more of an action/thriller like the manga, and it diverges less from the manga's plot. Henrietta also smiles a lot more in comparison to her perpetually stoic-looking original anime version. Note it being Truer to the Text is seen as a bad thing by many fans, as the changes are widely scorned, and there are manga fans who are dissatisfied with the adaptation nonetheless.
• Hellsing, in a rather similar vein, got a more faithful adaptation in the form of an OVA series, titled Hellsing Ultimate. The fact that creator Kouta Hirano hated the 2001 TV anime is probably a big reason for that.
• The 2011 Hunter × Hunter anime is a straightforward adaptation while the 1999 adaptation included many original ideas and scenes. This does not apply in every facet, however. The 2011 adaptation contains notable moments of censorship and missing scenes such as cutting a character who would later prove to be very important from the first episode.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • The 2012 televised anime adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood is much more faithful to the original manga than the 2007 film adaptation by APPP. While both versions cut out large portions of the manga, the 2012 adaptation preserves more of the plot, only excising a few scenes not relevant to the main story, and is visually closer to how Hirohiko Araki's artwork looked by the end of the part. The 2007 version, by contrast, went so far as removing characters, most notably Robert Speedwagon, who plays a major role in the original manga.
  • The 2014-2015 TV anime adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders covers the full series of events in the original order, unlike the 1993-1994 and 2000-2002 OVAs by APPP, and preserves details that were changed or omitted in the earlier adaptation, such as DIO trying to crush Jotaro with a steamroller instead of an oil tanker.
• Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is the most faithful adaptation to the original manga in spirit, tone, and content — even more than "Green Jacket."
  • Some fans, however, argue that Lupin III: Part III is truest to the manga's tone; it lacks the Darker and Edgier aspects, but the manga also had plenty of zanier moments both previous and later TV series wouldn't quite reach the levels of. Tonally, at least, Pink Jacket came closest to reaching the manga's Denser and Wackier aspects. Many fans will argue this isn't a good thing, however.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi is an interesting case. The first anime adaptation was fairly faithful to the manga until it diverged before the start of the first major story arc, leading to a Gecko Ending. Negima!? (second season) is a completely original plot that only uses the manga's characters and school setting. The OVA releases are faithful to the manga, but they're so deep into a story that none of its multiple previous adaptations properly covered, that they won't make much sense to anyone who hasn't read the manga.
• One Piece:
  • Though a major case of Adaptation Distillation, the TV special Episode of East Blue contains elements from the manga that weren't in the original anime, such as Makino having black hair (as opposed to dark green) and Koby getting shot while trying to save Zoro.
  • One Piece (2023) keeps Zeff Autocannibalising his own leg to survive after he and Sanji are marooned on a barren rock intact, in contrast to the anime (where it was cut off by an anchor when he saved Sanji from drowning).
• Sailor Moon:
  • Sailor Moon Crystal is a more direct Animated Adaptation of the original manga, specifically the first three acts, than the 90s anime or live-action show, albeit with a Setting Update from 1992 to 2014. To this end, character designs have been Art Shifted closer to Naoko Takeuchi's Noodle People aesthetic, and the plotting and pacing follow the manga's structure closely, recreating some panels scene for scene. As with the manga's chapters, episodes are called "acts," and each episode takes its title from the chapter it adapts. In fact, it's so faithful that it's pretty much a Shot-for-Shot Remake. In fact, some fans argue that it's too similar to the original manga.
  • The Viz redub of the original anime is much more faithful to the original Japanese script than the dub made by DiC Entertainment during The '90s. Among other things, Zoicite is a man again, he and Kunzite are stated as lovers, and there's no censorship of the lesbian relationship between Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters and Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light are closer to the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga than the second-series anime, with Joey's fighting skills coming into play and the dub having Yugi and Yami call each other "partner."
  • Despite being a parody of the series, Yami Yugi's Sociopathic Hero portrayal in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series is closer to his manga personality compared to the Adaptational Heroism he underwent in the anime.

Adapted from Mythology and Religion

• The 1995 made-for-television film/miniseries Moses is the most faithful screen adaptation of the Book of Exodus to date, making some consider it superior to The Ten Commandments, The Prince of Egypt, and that other film. For instance, the parting of the Red Sea is not immediate but takes time as it did in the scriptures. However, instead of the Pharaoh of the Exodus being Horemheb, Thutmose I or Thutmose II as Rabbinical Judaism, Jerome or Ussher's date for Moses' birth lined up with Egyptian history would indicate but rather Merneptah, the thirteenth son and successor of Ramesses II.
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew by the Italian film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini (ironically enough a gay Marxist atheist) created the most faithful version of the Life of Christ, as acknowledged by the Catholic Church and several protestant denominations in America and the world. It's truer than any other movie by Hollywood. How true is it? Well, it uses and adapts the entirety of the Gospel of Matthew, leaving out nothing from the book (narration, scenes, parables, dialogues). It is a word-for-word literal adaptation from text to screen to the point that during the set, the director used his copy of the Bible as a script rather than a separate screenplay.
• Norse Mythology and Classical Mythology:
  • Marvel Comics and DC Comics are an interesting case. Marvel focuses mainly on Norse Mythology, with which they take many liberties (albeit they played a major part in popularizing the myths to a popular audience). By contrast, its forays into Classical Mythology (mainly with Hercules) are relatively more accurate. Meanwhile, DC focuses almost completely on Classical mythology, again with a lot of liberties, but is more accurate in its rare takes on Norse myths. For instance, Neil Gaiman's use of the Norse Myths in the Vertigo series The Sandman (1989) features a red-haired Thor (who is a dimwit), a crafty and very sinister Odin, and a Loki who's Odin's blood-brother rather than Thor's. Gaiman pointed this out when he got complaints from fans who felt it was a Take That! to Marvel where the author had to remind them that in the myths, Thor is really dumb and gullible, was often outsmarted by simple schemes and as per the Lokasenna, his own wife, Lady Sif, cheated on him with Loki. Gaiman pointed out that his stories were well received by Scandinavian readers for this reason.
  • Disney High School mostly follows the Disney Animated Canon, but Hercules is the son of Zeus and Alcmene, as in the legend, with Hera and Amphitryon being stepparents. To keep it family-friendly, however, this is depicted as a divorce/remarriage situation rather than an affair. (And of course, it's a High School AU where everybody's human, and where Hades isn't Zeus' brother.)
  • God of War (PS4) and the God of War series in general offer a more mythologically accurate portrayal of Classical and Norse myths than Disney, DC, or Marvel. The gods are shown as Jerkass Gods, being Above Good and Evil, the games emphasize the alien moral values of these mythological times without the Bowdlerization of more child-friendly and Christianized takes on the myths. That said, God of War (PS4) takes a ton of artistic licenses with its portrayal of the Norse gods. While their morality was very different from conventional views of right and wrong, the Norse gods were largely depicted as being on humanity's side. Here, they're as evil as the Olympians in the original Greek trilogy, purely to make Kratos look more sympathetic. A solid example of this is the game's portrayal of Baldur, traditionally the most beloved and gentle of the Norse gods, and sometimes a Messianic Archetype, but here depicted as a Psychopathic Manchild. The end result is that when it comes to Norse mythology, it is only more faithful to an extent, while DC portrays the deities more accurately.
  • DuckTales (2017): Zig-zagged. The Season 1 episode "The Spear of Selene" portrays Zeus as a capricious, arrogant, petty deity and abusive father. However, in the original Greek myths, despite all his flaws, Zeus was decidedly capricious and temperamental but was not an abusive father. The majority of the ill treatment Zeus' children got was from his vengeful wife, Hera, and Zeus went to great lengths to try and keep Heracles safe from her.
  • A Total War Saga: TROY: Unlike most of his other modern appearances, where he's simply portrayed as a dog with three heads, Cerberus is depicted as in myth with living snakes making up his mane and tail.
  • Orfeo ed Euridice typically ends with an Adaptational Alternate Ending, where after Orpheus turns around and loses Eurydice again, Cupid brings her back to life as a reward for their undying love. Some versions stick closer to the myth's original ending by cutting the final scene out, having Orpheus successfully kill himself, or making Cupid a fantasy, among other variations.
  • L'Orfeo typically ends with Apollo taking Orpheus to Olympus after he turns around. The opera's original ending was closer to the myth, with Dionysus's followers pursuing Orpheus, and some productions either retain the original ending or alter it to be closer in other ways, such as cutting Apollo's scene.
  • Hallmark's miniseries adaptation of Jason and the Argonauts more accurately depicted the adventures of the Argonauts more than the Ray Harryhaussen film. It also more accurately represented Greek culture and architecture.

Adapted from Theatre

• The Children's Hour is a more accurate adaptation of the original play than the 1930s adaptation These Three. They were directed by the same individual, but the original film was heavily censored due to The Hays Code to the point where they had to rename it, as the original play was well-known for being about LGBT matters.
• The Toei anime Swan Lake (1981) is an unintentional version because it preceded the two other animated film adaptations of Swan Lake, but it's by far the most faithful to the original ballet out of the three. Siegfried's name remains Siegfried, Odette was cursed to be a swan by Rothbart prior to the story, and Rothbart turns into an owl instead of a bat-like creature or vulture.

Adapted from Toys

• In purely visual terms, the Direct to Video movie BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn stays very true to the designs of the LEGO models compared to the earlier Creative Capers movie trilogy, in which many characters were based on unfinished prototypes and got drastically redesigned to look more "real" and organic. They got hands, mouths, visible muscles, altered proportions, some resembled their original selves only loosely. The Legend Reborn's characters were almost exact replicas of the toy designs, with only minor changes like emotive eyebrows, odd "lips", less gaps and loincloths. Arguably, the designs were too accurate: some characters wore "life counters" (a play feature on the toys with no relation to the fiction) and more bizarrely, a replica of Telluris, the rider of the Skopio toy, was designed into the Skopio beast as if he were a part of the animal's anatomy. The film's characters were also indisputably robotic just like the toys, contradicting fiction in which they were organic beings wearing armor and cyber-enhancements. Fans often point out the art styles of the original trilogy and TLR should have been swapped.
• Bumblebee got a lot of attention for being much more faithful to the original Transformers toy-line and cartoons than Michael Bay's Transformers Film Series, even though it's ostensibly a prequel to Bay's movies (so much so that its lead to speculation about the film potentially launching a Soft Reboot which ended up true). This is evident in some relatively minor details (like Bumblebee being a Volkswagen Beetle instead of a Chevrolet Camaro), but it's also an overriding feature of the visual style and art direction. The characters' designs prominently feature bold primary colors and simple geometric shapes, and they're considerably cleaner and less visually busy—making them look like actual transforming action figures brought to life. Likewise, the story, tone, and characterization feel much closer to the cartoon. The film completely eschews the previous films' crude humor and sexualization in favor of a light-hearted and wholesome feel more typical of the Transformers brand. Rather than being a high-stakes Disaster Movie, it's about a kid bonding with a robot, and the focus is largely on their platonic bond, with nary a hint of adolescent romance anywhere. The action sequences are mainly clashes between robots, with minimal focus on human military personnel, avoiding the previous movies' slide towards Military Fiction. The plot is also far simpler, feeling more like an episode of one of the cartoons, with most of the movie just being Charlie and Bumblebee dealing with everyday problems. A major reason is that director Travis Knight actually grew up watching G1 Transformers unlike Michael Bay.

Adapted from Video Games

• The 2005 film adaptation of Doom largely had nothing to do with the game beyond the name, only sharing some of the monster designs from the then-recent Doom³, instead telling a story about a virus that turned humans into monsters, with no connection to Hell. Doom: Annihilation, a Direct to Video movie with no ties to the prior one is more faithful, being a more straightforward adaptation of the games, most specifically Doom³ (albeit with a female protagonist), and keeps the connection to Hell intact.
• The Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection for Steam and Nintendo Switch, released in 2023, consists of remasters of the first three games in the series. In the case of Etrian Odyssey (originally released in 2007) and Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard (originally released in 2008), these lack the new content from the earlier 3DS remakes Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl (2013) and Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight (2015), respectively (most notably Story Mode and classes backported from later games). This means a lot of these games' Early-Installment Weirdness is retained and the 3DS versions' changes reverted, such as enemies having still sprites instead of animatated 3D models, FOEs being represented as glowing spheres when exploring the dungeons rather than the monsters' 3D models, certain skills' balance changes being rolled back^note One notable example is the Medic's Immunize skill in the first game. In the DS original, it mitigates all types of damage. In the 3DS version, it only mitigates elemental damage. The Origins Collection version goes back to the DS version's behavior., and the games charging fees to rename characters and store items as opposed to being free services in the 3DS games. However, some of the quality-of-life features from the 3DS games were kept, such as multiple Difficulty Levels, the more streamlined auto-walk tool, and the skill upgrade interface presenting skills as a visual Tech Tree rather than a list.
• The 2021 Pixel Remaster series for Final Fantasy are brand new remakes of the first six games in the series. Those games have seen earlier re-releases and remakes that have added content, but the Pixel Remaster versions are closer to the original releases content-wise. For example, the Pixel Remaster version of the first Final Fantasy game lacks the new Optional Bosses and dungeons that were added in the Game Boy Advance and PlayStation Portable versions, and also reverts back to using a Spell Charge system for magic versus a Mana Meter.
• The 2011 Mega Man (Archie Comics) comic book series followed the themes and aesthetic of the Mega Man (Classic) series more closely than the Dreamwave adaptation, and adapted storylines from the games (albeit with new touches and connecting unrelated elements for flavor).
• When Metal Gear Solid was remade for the Nintendo Game Cube as The Twin Snakes, all the voice acting had to be re-recorded due to the GameCube's higher quality sound chip revealing outdoor traffic noises that were inaudible in the original release. In the process, most of the 1998 script's changes were reverted, resulting in a more faithful translation of the original Japanese script. Unfortunately, this was mostly negatively received due to most of the changes being regarded as superior.
• A number of Mortal Kombat's multimedia projects in the '90s heavily toned down the violence in an attempt to get broader appeal; Mortal Kombat: The Movie sported a PG-13 rating, which meant that the gore iconic to the series was largely cut, and Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins and Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm (a quasi-sequel to the film) were geared toward younger audiences, so there was little-to-no killing or the series' signature gore. Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge was released in 2020 with an R Rating, and kept much of the violence in the series intact.
• PaRappa the Rapper had a 2001 anime that omitted several characters from the original games, to the point that PaRappa, Papa PaRappa, Boxy Boy, PJ Berri, Katy Kat, Sunny Funny, Chop Chop Master Onion, Prince Fleaswallow, Hairdresser Octopus, Chief Puddle and MC King Kong Mushi were the only characters in the anime who weren't Canon Foreigners. The second anime PJ Berri No Mogu Mogu Munya Munya reuses some of the characters created for the first anime, but notably includes more characters from the games who were omitted from the previous anime, including Lammy and Ma-san from the spinoff game Um Jammer Lammy.
• Pokémon:
  • The OVA special Pokémon Origins is a much closer, if abbreviated, adaptation of a Pokémon game than the TV anime, following the storyline of Pokémon Red and Blue very closely, and having the Pokédex be more like the data recording device it was in the games than a true encyclopedia in the anime. In fact, even taking the pick-and-choose nature into account, it's even more faithful than the previous title holder, the Pokémon Zensho manga^note That had most of the quest but didn't have actual captures.
  • Pokémon Generations does the same with later games in the series, of which the TV anime was infamous for sometimes outright ignoring the plots. It even features game-accurate character designs—Pikachu's oval-shaped head from the games is almost never seen outside of official game artwork.
  • As noted before, Pokémon Zensho was an almost scene-by-scene adaptation of RGB, and was considered the truest adaptation until Origins.
• While Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City adapts the first three games, resulting in quite a few changes in characterization, the game largely focuses only on characters introduced in the original games and on adapting the plot and Survival Horror feel of the games, in contrast to the prior Paul W.S. Anderson movies, which focused heavily on action and Canon Foreigner Alice, and by the third movie changed the overall plot so much it bore little resemblance to the games.
• Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is an example of how this can go wrong. The first film is considered one of the better video game adaptations and an aversion of Video Game Movies Suck, but a common complaint from fans of the games concerned the liberties taken with the source material. As such, with Revelation the filmmakers promised something closer to the games, in particular adapting the plot of the third game more or less faithfully. Problem was, this required retconning numerous plot elements from the first film, in particular the fact that what had been a fundamentalist, witch-burning Christian sect in that film was now a pagan cult worshiping Valtiel. The enormous Series Continuity Errors that resulted were just some of the film's many problems, but they helped get it a far more scathing reception than its predecessor.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic X is much more faithful to the source material than previous animated adaptations of the character, most notably the various American cartoons. Yes, even with the Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
    • The OVA, to a lesser extent (at least to the classic era). While it did take liberties, its tone, characterizations, and art are ripped directly from what you see from the Genesis titles for the most part.
  • The 2013 Cosmic Retcon of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) was meant to be this for a comic series that started out as being an adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) instead of the original games, before even deviating from that as time went on. Though some characters and aspects from Sonic SatAM were retained, most non-game elements were discarded.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) is intended to be this to an even greater degree, removing all elements and characters that originated in the previous comic series and Sonic SatAM.
  • Sonic Prime is this to all previous western Sonic cartoons, even using the games as background.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a much closer visual adaptation of the Super Mario Bros. games than the 1993 live-action movie. Mario, Bowser, Toad, the Mushroom Kingdom, and the rest look almost exactly like their game counterparts save for some relatively minor Art Evolution, in contrast to the changes the 1993 film made like turning Bowser into a human(oid) character descended directly from dinosaurs and making Dinohattan (its Mushroom Kingdom equivalent) a realistic-looking sci-fi dystopia. Many more mechanics, leitmotifs, and features from the games also appear, and far more frequently and faithfully. Its story does differ in one major aspect from both the game series and the live-action movie in that Mario's brother Luigi is the one who's captured by Bowser instead of a princess.

Adapted from Visual Novels

• The Key/Visual Arts visual novels Kanon, Air and CLANNAD each received two anime adaptations: first they were adapted by Toei Animation, then Kyoto Animation.^note Toei adapted Kanon into a 13-episode anime, but they adapted Air and Clannad into movies. The Toei adaptations are Compressed Adaptations that aim to focus on a single plotline, while the KyoAni adaptations are much more faithful to the games' various routes and cut out less details.
• Nasuverse:
  • The 2006 anime adaptation of Fate/stay night by Studio DEEN, while focused on the Fate route, also includes elements of both the "Unlimited Blade Works" route and the "Heaven's Feel" route. However, ufotable's Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] is a version more focused on the titular route. The Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel film trilogy is more of a downplayed example, as while it's more faithful to the "Heaven's Feel" route in some ways, it differs from the source material in others, particularly with its Adaptation Expansion.
  • The anime adaptation of Tsukihime left many fans quite bitter over how much it deviated from the source material to the point of often being declared nonexistent. However, the manga adaptation retells the original story more faithfully.

Adapted from Western Animation

• Inspector Gadget (1999) based on the cartoon had little in common with the cartoon with the exception of the characters' names. Inspector Gadget 2 remedied it by having Claw's face not shown, a clumsy Gadget and Penny being a key character.
• The first Scooby-Doo film was originally conceived as an Affectionate Parody of the series, and it showed, recharacterizing most of the cast based on longstanding fandom in-jokes. The film's sequel, Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed, was able to be more in line with the cartoons, featuring fan-favorite monsters and a haunted house for a central location.
• Welcome to Pooh Corner is based on the Disney version of Winnie the Pooh, not the original books, but like the books, it portrays Tigger as living with Kanga and Roo. Most of the animated franchise has him living in a treehouse by himself.

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