In Apex Legends, many of the weapons and Legends' abilities are recycled from Titanfall 2. Most notably, Wraith's "Into the Void" ability is copied wholesale from Titanfall 2 's Phase Shift right down to the black-and-white negative vision. Even a few animations and character models have been reused, including the run off of a dropship and the legend Pathfinder having the same body as a MRVN robot from both Titanfall games.
When Telltale designed their games for the Wii, they needed to recycle their 3D models due to the console's limited memory..
Played with in the second episode of Season One. One of the props in a prop warehouse is a sign from the developer's previous game, Bone. So it's a recycled prop being used as a recycled prop.
Used more straight, the cow from that same episode can be briefly seen in the third episode of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures. Although it's hidden behind a door, you can see it and it's extremely obvious it's the same cow since it doesn't fit the art style at all.
Turn 10 Studios, known for developing Forza series is notorious for recycling old car models from the first four Motorsport installments. The most blatant example is the Nissan Silvia Spec-R S15 (as pictured above) which is reused since its debut and the model (including its interior) has yet to be remade from ground up other than minor detail changes and adding new bodykits in later titles including Horizon 5.
Modern Warfare 3 follows suit, with multiple returning weapons reusing their MW2 models at various times despite having new ones used everywhere else - in particular, the new USP model doesn't show up anywhere in the campaign. There's even one campaign level that reuses a warehouse from a multiplayer map in Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty: Black Ops II directly lifts some of its flashback and Nazi Zombies arsenal from the previous game, with only new animations and slightly-changed models — though one weapon model from Modern Warfare 2 also sneaks its way into The '80s. In turn, the first Black Ops reuses some weapons from World at War for its Zombies maps and the "Project Nova" flashback level.
The James Bond licensed games occasionally get in on the prop recycling as well. GoldenEye Reloaded reuses a couple weapon models from the game adaptation of Quantum of Solace (like the "TND-16" and "Hutchinson A3" replacing the old "Terralite III" and "PT-9 Interdictus"), and props from inside a German dam in Call of Duty 2; it even reuses weapon models from the Wii version in the weapon cases at the Dubai level. 007 Legends, in turn, reuses nearly the entire Reloaded arsenal.
Valve in general reuses props, textures, and sound effects across franchises whenever they can, mostly because nearly all of their games started out as mods of others. Since every game except Team Fortress 2 has essentially the same visual style, and the engine itself does not support significantly higher-detail graphics than it did when it was first created, it still looks natural. Open up Hammer's prop browser for either of the Left 4 Dead games or Portal 2 if you're so inclined; many of the props that were lifted from Counter-Strike: Source are still in folders named for their respective maps.
The "Aperture Science High-Energy Pellet" in Portal uses the same sprite and sounds as the Combine orbs in Half-Life 2. The orbs used to fuel the security systems, at least, appear to be completely harmless, so they can't be the same as the One-Hit Kill High-Energy Pellet.note In fact, part of the reason Portal was declared to share a universe with Half-Life was because, early in development, it reused so many props and textures from that game.
Car wreck props are likewise reused from Half-Life 2 throughout the various Source games and end up being quite unfitting due to mostly being Eastern European cars made specifically for HL2's setting, ending up in the Middle East or the United States.
Portal 2 seems to even have an in-universe example: In the informative looping videos that display in the elevator areas, the "animal king" the voiceover describes is a turret made giant-size and painted over with a leopard skin.
The turrets in Portal, while using different models and some different sound effects, have the same basic shape and properties as those in Half-Life 2.
The plants from Chell's room in Portal 2 sometimes show up in later animations featuring the Team Fortress cast. Like the earlier Telltale example, it stands out, because the art styles don't quite mix. You can see them in the "Meet The Pyro" trailer, as well as the Steam Link introduction video.
Lampshaded in Aperture Desk Job which has a visible box labeled "recycled props".
The Pip-Boy, Vault designs, and other stuff such as indoor areas and the Vertibird from Fallout 3 were reused in Fallout: New Vegas. It helps that New Vegas was done in 18 months, primarily by a different developer, and since they use the same Game Engine and are set in the same universe, it made sense to save time where they could by reusing appropriate props.
The skeleton in Fallout 4 along with several sounds (such as picking bottles) are directly reused from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Aboard Prydwen, you can also find an "experimental plant" which is basically Nirnroot from Skyrim.
W in general reused a lot of sprites from series' it shared with Super Robot Wars Judgment. K and L also did the same. Most of the games did however add to or improve the animations and effects for many attacks. J is the first game using that engine.
And then there's the PSP port of Super Robot Wars Advance, which pretty much recycles whatever it can from past PS2 titles. The devs admitted that this remake wouldn't even happen if it wasn't for this trope making it financially possible.
The series is quite fond of reusing things if they can. The only time this is averted are the original Game Boy Advance OG games, each with their own engine with very little if anything reused.
In the Mass Effect 2: Arrival DLC, the animation and prop seen when Dr. Amanda Kenson breaks out of her restraints after being rescued by Shepard uses the same motions (she uses both hands to rip the neck collar off, and grimaces while doing so, before staggering to her feet) as Jack does during her recruitment mission in the same game.
Mass Effect 3 uses the Eviscerator shotgun's barrel (upsized and recolored) as the barrels for the guns on the new shuttle aboard the Normandy. It also uses the barrel for the Vindicator battle rifle for the barrel of the Sentry Turret power used by Engineer Shepard and the Quarian Engineer and Turian Saboteur Engineer multiplayer characters.
Serious Sam 3 BFE uses many props and models from a cancelled generic military shooter which the developer Croteam had to cancel after the original publisher encountered financial difficulties. The game also has several models repurposed from a failed Doom 4 pitch.
The Darkstalkers series is notorious for not redrawing a character unless they have to. This was especially notable in the Capcom vs. games, where Morrigan's sprites were reused with little to no modification for seven years and always stood out against the newer sprites of other characters. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom greatly amused many gamers as, due to the game being in 3D, Capcom finally had to re-animate her. How much model and motion data was retained for Morrigan, Zero, and Frank West (not to mention Ryu and Chun Li) from Tatsunoko to Marvel vs. Capcom 3 varies.
Capcom promptly got at it again with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, where several characters from their side reused their MvC3 models. They very quickly proved to clash with the artstyle of the newly-modeled characters and the lighting engine designed around them.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask recycles nearly every character model from Ocarina of Time, as well as the pause screen and a few other models, and yet it still manages to create an almost completely different game. Mainly by making Termina some kind of strange Bizarro Universe counterpart of Hyrule where everyone has different names and their personalities are changed.
The Dice/EA Battlefield series re-uses props throughout the series:
Battlefield 4 re-uses a tonne of content from Battlefield 3. The animations for knifing an enemy, reloading the shotguns, the assault rifles, jeeps, and enemy vehicles are all direct copies from the previous game. Several weapons in the released game also have their models lifted from Medal of Honor: Warfighter, sometimes with their associated animations as well, at least in part because the team behind the Medal of Honor reboots handled the BF4 DLC and post-release support and the games are in the same engine.
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World uses the same skit portraits for the original cast as in the first game. This is rather odd in Regal's case, as by the time he joins your party he's no longer wearing the prison uniform his skit portrait shows him wearing (though he eventually just changes into his prison garbs anyway).
Anyone who played Rayman 2: The Great Escape will probably notice that a certain very characteristic texture of grating was reused for walls that Pey'j from Beyond Good & Evil can cut with his tool.
Many units in Warcraft III share the same animations while looking nothing like each other, in addition to the usual Underground Monkey reskinning.
Starcraft would reuse certain units for some characters in the campaign for cutscenes. Unlike Blizzards prior game Warcraft II, Starcraft would sometimes reuse certain units (even heroic units) for units that didn't have a dedicated unit. Notably during the mission where you fight Aldaris in Brood Wars, his in-game unit was simply a renamed Tassadar (along with the portrait), being the only instance where such a reuse was done in a player controlled enviroment as all others are in scripted cutscenes (other ones including using a generic battlecruiser for Gerald Dugalle or Mengsk, and a generic Dark Templar for Razagal). Interestingly a few of these units exist in the game as incomplete units, indicating that the reuse was to cut down on size as these characters only show up for one cutscene in-game.
Gameloft: The worst offender is their 1st-generation (pre-iOS 5.1) FPS games. One M2 machinegun model is used in Splinter Cell: Conviction, Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard, and two of their Modern Combat games.
Modern Ubisoft games like to do this whenever they can. Parts of the SC: Conviction armory are reused from Rainbow Six: Vegas (most notably the AK-47 and AKS-74U prominently used in the flashback level set during The Gulf War) with appropriate updates like actually changing the magazine model when the player upgrades their magazine capacity. Blacklist follows suit, grabbing the models for the "Goblin" and ACE 53 from Far Cry 3, and possibly the SA-58 OSW from Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Watch_Dogs is probably the most notable, taking models from all of the above, up to and including a fictional design from Future Soldier.
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reuse of the first game's "AT-14" pistol in the final level. The burst-firing ASP rifle also shows up, model unchanged, in multiplayer.
MechWarrior Living Legends recycles a large number of (largely environmental) assets from Crysis despite being a total conversion mod. Prop recycling was part of the decision to remain as a game mod rather than going as a full standalone CryEngine game, as they would have had to remove and replace all the recycled Crysis props and audio effects.
This becomes a Discussed Trope in Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. The game has you play as a recycled man, in a recycled cauldron, using a recycled hammer to climb a mountain made entirely of recycled assets. Early in the game, the narration points out that games aren't normally assembled from premade components despite predictions of such, because once an asset is recognized as reusable, it becomes "trash", much the same way food becomes trash when you put it in the sink.
Played for Laughs in Undertale where Sans the Skeleton has a snow-covered sentry booth set up in the forest outside Snowdin. You later run into him at various other points and in various other areas throughout the game, and he's almost always sitting in an identical, snow-covered booth. It finally gets egregious to the point of receiving a lampshade when you meet him selling hotdogs from the booth in Hotland, with one NPC chalking up the snow on the booth's roof to Sans just being too lazy to clean it off. In actuality, this prop recycling is a clue that Sans can teleport. Ergo, the booth looks the exact same because it actually really is the exact same booth every time you see it. Examining it when you first see it in the Snowdin forest even reveals that Sans stores ketchup, mustard and relish in the booth.
The Atari Jaguar port of Wolfenstein 3-D, as part of its attempt to upgrade the game's presentation, borrowed a couple of first-person weapon sprites from Doom to act as those for the pistol, chaingun and rocket launcher. The pistol and launcher at least had some work done to them to more resemble weapons that existed during the war (the pistol having bits cut off of the sides to resemble a German WWII-issue pistol, and the launcher was simplified into basically a tube with only the muzzle resembling the Doom weapon), but since hand-held Gatling-style cannons are still purely in the realm of fiction even after legitimate attempts to make them fifty years after the real war, the chaingun sprite was essentially unmodified.
Sunless Sea recycles much of its minor character art from Fallen London. This usually works, although it leads to cases like the Bright-Eyed Sequencer's portrait not lining up with her text description.
A hardware example: the DVD remote for the original Xbox was basically a black and green variant of a remote design used by RCA, GE, and ProScan-brand electronics of the time, even using the same remote codes (since the manufacturer of those brands at the time, Thomson, also created DVD drives for the console, presumably they volunteered to do it when Microsoft planned the add-on). Because of this, the remotes of Thomson-created DVD players can operate the Xbox, and the Xbox DVD remote can operate said DVD players as well.
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun arms the basic infantry of both sides with "M16 Mk. II pulse rifles". Whereas Nod's versions of the rifles are either just regular M16s or entirely fictional all-CG guns, GDI's variations of the rifle are represented by reused M41A pulse rifles and M590 assault rifles.
Mafia: Definitive Edition, being a side project by Hangar 13 with the engine and gameplay mechanics taken from Mafia III, also reuses a lot of props and textures from the latter. Dozens upon dozens of NPC models from Mafia III can also be found in Mafia: Definitive Edition's archives, albeit unused unless spawned through mods.
The exterior of The Count's manor in Conker's Bad Fur Day is a sightly modified version of the eponymous manor of Mad Monster Mansion from Banjo-Kazooie.
Deathloop unashamedly reuses the slide and teleport (Blink) animations from Dishonored, along with architecture models such as Dunwall's Tower's distinctive two-sided fireplace. This isn't a coincidence; Deathloop takes place in the future of Dishonored's universe, and some architectual trends survived to Deathloop's era.
The Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza) series recycles assets aggressively - from prop objects, to animations, to minigames, to background music, to battle styles and attacks, to locations. This is somewhat justified, since the games revolve around the same small shared locations - tight, dense environments depicted with relatively realistic level of detail - while Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is a small sub-unit of Sega with a relatively restrictive budget, that tends to release games on a near-annual cadence.
One example that fans joke about is the "cutscene gun", a distinctive PM Makarov clone with a long barrel and silver finish◊ which has been a fixture of the series' selection of firearm models since Yakuza 3 in 2009. The series overall has generally stuck with reusing the same handful of guns over and over, even importing some from Binary Domain. The "cutscene gun" simply remains the most recognisable.
introduction video.
